The Spirituality of the Shadow exhibition dedicated to photographers Vasco Ascolini and Cesare Di Liborio will be held at the Château de Cabriès (13480) until September 22, 2024.
Its commissioner Robert Pujade sent us this text:
The Musée Mélik in Cabriès has been exhibiting works by photographers for two years in the rooms dedicated to the paintings of Edgard Mélik (1904-1976). After an exhibition of Kertész’s distortions last year, the museum is offering a retrospective of Vasco Ascolini as well as a series by a photographer he introduced to the spirituality of the shadow, Cesare Di Liborio.
Vasco Ascolini
Originally from Reggio Emilia, Vasco Ascolini began his career in 1965 as photographers for his city’s three major theaters. He quickly established himself as a master of chiaroscuro in a work where his predilection directs him towards people on stage, theater lights, architecture and museums. In all cases, his images are shot through with oppositions between deep black and raw white to the point that the subjects he targets fade in favor of the photographic signifier.
For the Cabriès exhibition, where these themes are presented, Vasco Ascolini is offering a new series with an unexpected and provocative title: From Anaxagoras to Star Trek. During frequent visits to the Maritime Museum in Paris, he defined a world where the visionary attitude of an artist photographer opposes the simple sight of a visitor interested in the epics of the navy.
Cesare Di Liborio
The Dark Room on the banks of the Erebus
Taken as a whole, the Ade series gives off an apocalyptic atmosphere: semblances of tortured landscapes – where minerals mingle with plants – rub shoulders with animal skeletons or strange fragments of statues. The photographic material is treated like paint, in layers and streaks, reminiscent of certain paintings by Max Ernst and the image backgrounds are superimposed in panels as in the screen prints of Robert Rauschenberg. Cesare Di Liborio intervenes directly on the silver layer of the photographs in order to produce erased or overloaded visibility and washed out hues or enhanced darkness. His work as a photographer essentially focuses, here, on the signifying material of the image with a specific aim: to show how the photographic signifier signifies itself as hallucinogenic power.
Vasco Ascolini & Cesare Di Liborio : Spiritualité de l’ombre
Until September 22, 2024
Château de Cabriès – Musée Mélik
13480 Cabriès, France
www.amismuseemelik.fr
