Guido Guidi. Altre Storie
Guido Guidi
Viasaterna is proud to present a solo
exhibition of the work of Guido Guidi (Cesena, 1941). Guido Guidi. Altre storie
is the title of the exhibition project curated by Marco De Michelis and Paola
Nicolin, which through a selection of around sixty photographs, largely unseen
before, offers a new perspective on the work and research of one of the masters
of Italian photography.
The exhibition unfolds through various narrative registers: the first floor hosts a selection of works on architecture and landscape, while the itinerary continues on the lower floor with a previously unseen selection of portraits of Anna Guidi, the artist’s daughter. Independent from one another in terms of subject, architecture, landscapes and portraiture – i.e. buildings and people – constitute two interweaving and indissoluble paths in terms of themes address and methodologies adopted. What appears to be separate is profoundly united; what is sensed as fragmentary, on closer inspection is perfectly symmetrical. Together they constitute the two sides of the moon, testifying to the coherence, solidity and conceptual structure of his work.
Guidi got to know the world through the lens of his camera: suburbia, the countryside, but also “other stories”: ones of incomplete fragments such as landscapes shaken by dramatic earthquakes, such as that of Gibellina in Sicily; stories of major architecture, beyond the anonymous and spontaneous creations to be found in the Italian provinces, to the extraordinary masterpieces of Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe: sublime, yet also exposed to the passing of light and time which in some way wears down its edges.
On the other hand, the collection of portraits of Anna, Guido Guidi’s daughter, comes across as an exception in terms of the attention the photographer’s gaze reserves for her. Anna is Guido Guidi’s darkroom: that space of possibility that may be explored whenever the gaze settles on reality and waits there. On a cupboard door in the artist’s studio in Cesena there’s a handwritten sentence that reads, “No metaphors, just waiting”. Indeed, the body of works dedicated to Anna consists of forms of waiting that unfold over the years.
The exhibition unfolds through various narrative registers: the first floor hosts a selection of works on architecture and landscape, while the itinerary continues on the lower floor with a previously unseen selection of portraits of Anna Guidi, the artist’s daughter. Independent from one another in terms of subject, architecture, landscapes and portraiture – i.e. buildings and people – constitute two interweaving and indissoluble paths in terms of themes address and methodologies adopted. What appears to be separate is profoundly united; what is sensed as fragmentary, on closer inspection is perfectly symmetrical. Together they constitute the two sides of the moon, testifying to the coherence, solidity and conceptual structure of his work.
Guidi got to know the world through the lens of his camera: suburbia, the countryside, but also “other stories”: ones of incomplete fragments such as landscapes shaken by dramatic earthquakes, such as that of Gibellina in Sicily; stories of major architecture, beyond the anonymous and spontaneous creations to be found in the Italian provinces, to the extraordinary masterpieces of Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe: sublime, yet also exposed to the passing of light and time which in some way wears down its edges.
On the other hand, the collection of portraits of Anna, Guido Guidi’s daughter, comes across as an exception in terms of the attention the photographer’s gaze reserves for her. Anna is Guido Guidi’s darkroom: that space of possibility that may be explored whenever the gaze settles on reality and waits there. On a cupboard door in the artist’s studio in Cesena there’s a handwritten sentence that reads, “No metaphors, just waiting”. Indeed, the body of works dedicated to Anna consists of forms of waiting that unfold over the years.