The Italian Cultural Institute is presenting an exhibition by Patrizia Mussa, Théâtralités, later in March Galerie XII Paris will present another, Architecture de l’imaginaire. Gabriel Bauret sends us this text.
The Floating Eye
The feeling we experience when we enter a theater or opera hall guides the work that Patrizia Mussa has been carrying out for several years now on the interiors of Italian buildings, from Turin to Venice, and from north to south, to Naples and Palermo. It is perhaps even one of the first motives of her quest: relive and restore a personal experience through artistic gesture. The visual appeal is present in the many details that make up the rooms she chose to photograph. Entering each of the images is in fact discovering the diversity of forms of the so-called “Italian” theater: the paintings which decorate the ceilings, the statues installed on the sides of the stage, the chandeliers and other lighting, the patterns and color of the curtains which echo the seats of the spectators, as well as the variety of materials used in the composition of the buildings… Decorative elements quote or symbolize theater and opera, literature and librettos, their stories, their authors, figures linked to the heritage of antiquity, the mythology so often present as filigrees in Italian monuments.
At the beginning of her work, Patrizia Mussa seems to mainly adopt a frontal point of view, first facing the scene before the viewer, then she operates in reverse shot. The lens also turns towards the ceiling and the curtain sometimes rises on a painting, that of a future decor. Little by little, her attention shifts elsewhere: she leaves the room, explores behind the scenes, as it were, let her gaze wanders into the hall, the foyer and backstage. She photographs the restoration sites of certain buildings, even venturing outside. But the artistic intention, the treatment she subjects her images to does not necessarily lead the viewer down the path of documentary restitution which would be imbued with a spirit of inventory.
Patrizia Mussa’s approach follows a narrow, subtle line between reality and the interpretation of places, between the photographic act and the pictorial gesture; more precisely the use of pastel which gives the image a very particular atmosphere and tone but also contributes to the desire to significantly detach oneself from the real world, a form of derealization. The combination of the technique of photography and manual intervention constitutes an original writing which allows the artist to express what could probably not have been captured initially by taking a photo. We are witnessing a fusion of two operations which must be distinguished here from the colorization of black and white views, a process which has marked the history of photography until today. Because it is not so much the color that is superimposed on black and white to give a surplus of presence or realism. On the contrary, Patrizia Mussa significantly moves away from the scene and takes us towards her own perception of the world of theater and opera. For her, it is in fact a matter of detaching herself from the actual surface of the photograph to install the writing on another level and at the same time ensure that each image thus produced becomes unique.
The pastel even creates a veil between the reality of the place and the form of very personal memories that Patrizia Mussa comes to revive here; a part of mystery invites itself into this vision of the world of opera and theater. Our eye thus floats in-between; so much so that we hesitate about the true existence of these architectures, as if they had come from the imagination of the artist.
Gabriel Bauret
Excerpt from a text published in the book “Teatralità” published in 2023 by Silvana Editoriale, on the occasion of an exhibition by Patrizia Mussa at the Palazzo Reale in Milan.
Patrizia Mussa, Théâtralités
Institut culturel italien
Hôtel de Gallifet
50 rue de Varenne
75007 Paris
Du 29 janvier au 4 avril
https://iicparigi.esteri.it/fr/
Patrizia Mussa, Architecture de l’imaginaire
Galerie XII Paris
14 rue des Jardins Saint-Paul
75004 Paris
Du 13 mars au 10 mai
https://www.galerie-photo12.com/fr/
