"Davide Tranchina : Big Bang"
2009-11-17 until 2010-01-09
Nicoletta Rusconi
Milano, , IT Italy

In his solo exhibition entitled "Big Bang", Davide Tranchina is presenting a cycle of new works in which he has experimented with a different use of the photographic medium that, although it is more conceptual, seeks to explore new possibilities of expression.These works are large format black and white close-ups obtained by scanning the negative shadow images left on photographic paper by everyday objects placed in contact with it (known in English as "photograms"). These light effects appear to be the fleeting traces of spectral presences, producing in the black space of the background images that are familiar yet surreal at the same time. They recall ghost ships, atomic mushroom clouds, stellar spaces and galaxies located in a remote and mysterious universe, permeated not only with magic realism but also solitude. Or else they may seem to be evanescent fragments of a dream and imagined realities emerging from our inner depths, where the most secret passions dwell.

A sense of metaphysical beauty is expressed by the prominence given to the relationship between light and darkness and the semantic drift of the objects imprinted, which in Davide Tranchina's images become something else, exposing the ambiguous nature of reality.

An important difference with regard to his previous works is the loss of a reference to the real world, which makes way for the emergence of visionary subjectivity and narration. In the installation constructed in part of the gallery, for example, the artist has created a stellar space where the spectator can experience the mental reality of a starry night.

In Tranchina's work, an old and simple procedure such the photogram acquires new significance: this does not regard only its aesthetic quality, but also its conceptual aspect. In fact, the obsolescence of a technique may set free the utopian dimension implicit in the dawn of every technological process, revealing the double significance of things (Walter Benjamin makes a fascinating reference to this in his Arcades Project). In this work, the artist makes use of an alternative artistic model capable of expressing visually the contradiction between the realism inherent in photography and actual reality, showing both the object and its shadow and reflecting on the perception of things and their subsequent image.

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