Luigi Ghirri. Zone di passaggio
Discrete semi-darkness in the works of Mario Airò, Gregory Crewdson, Paola De Pietri, Paola Di Bello, Stefano Graziani, Franco Guerzoni, Armin Linke, Amedeo Martegani, Awoiska van der Molen
curated by Ilaria Campioli
promoted by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia (Civic Museums, Panizzi Library) in collaboration with Archivio Eredi Luigi Ghirri
exhibition realised thanks to the European Funds of the Emilia-Romagna Region. With the Art Bonus contribution of IREN
Zone di passaggio proposes a reflection on darkness and night, aiming to transmit their important role in the collective imagination. Point of departure are the numerous works of night settings that Luigi Ghirri created throughout his production. These are places “lit in a provisional way, or the spaces that live their own discreet semi-darkness and that only temporarily become luminous in a festively provisional way, “activating an alternative reading of reality. For Ghirri, therefore, it is the flares, the flashes, the small intermittences such as those of fireflies that express the best modes of illumination, since they keep the perception of darkness intact, preserving the areas of shadow.
Starting with experiments on medium and visibility carried out by Franco Guerzoni together with Luigi Ghirri and Franco Vaccari in the late 1960s, the exhibition presents works of further important authors offering “micro-ruptures” generated by sudden illuminations, questioning and rethinking the relationship we have with darkness. In his 1923 famous speech, The Ritual of the Snake, Aby Warburg affirms that “electricity enslaved, the lightning held captive in the wire, has produced a civilization which has no use for heathen poetry” and, in a way, no use for the sacrality between humanity and nature. This perception is revealed on a new level of comprehension within the works of Mario Airò, Gregory Crewdson, Paola De Pietri, Paola Di Bello, Stefano Graziani, Armin Linke, Amedeo Martegani, and Awoiska van der Molen.
Here, different projects evoke in diverse ways the place of possibility offered by darkness, whose blaze, openings, and illuminations allow for new configurations.
