Il Castello Arte Moderna e Contemporanea gallery, presents Francesco Vitali’s works (Novara, 1971), a young art photographer, filmmaker, set designer and lighting designer,who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan. The images of cities and their creative manipulation are the focus of Vitali’s work, an eclectic artist who unite, in an innovative and engaging way, traditional photography with digital processing, an approach that produces abstract and surreal effects. The technique of the kaleidoscope, the multiplication of images, is the fundamental premise of Vitali’s work here. The deviation from tradition is evident by looking at the result, as Vitali offers no more frontal photographs: he offers the public something new, surreal and dreamlike: images multiply and pull open, just like “cement flowers”, and create new visions. He transforms materials such as iron, steel, glass, into something lighter, freeing the observer’s eye, as described by Vitali, and dispelling the sense of claustrophobia and unnaturalness of “the vertical city”. As the critic Roberto Mutti keenly observed, “… to be faithful to the architecture and yet not present simply a slavish and flat description, the photographer must mark his independence and make a quantum leap from representation through interpretation. So has moved Francesco Vitali: the absolute freedom of expression of his choice led him to create new combinations, daring constructions, which are found in multiple mirror images of great charm. ” In these photographs, New York is revealed to us in completely different forms and geometries, but in every picture you can find traces and clues of the structures which we already know and have been shown from all points of view. All points, that is, except this one, as Vitali condenses in each photograph multiple perspectives, combining them in a game of truly amazing symmetries and references. New York is only the starting point of a journey that began in 2007 and brought the artist to Milan, Piacenza, Tel Aviv, Acre, Jerusalem, Barcelona and San Francisco, cities that he has reinterpreted in a modern way while keeping intact each city’s deeper identity. ”Francesco Vitali remains essentially true to the photograph, which is ultimately recognizable, but, through his work, it is now somewhat revitalized, energized, and driven to other visual horizons” (Mutti), giving rise to the “cement flowers,” and a new way of approaching the representation of the cities.
Il Castello Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
Via Brera, 16
20121 Milano
Tel. +39 02862913
Fax +39 02877962
[email protected]
