Herb Ritts @ Palazzo della Ragione, Milan

Time for a sweet escape in my home town, and my architect-to-be sister brought me to Palazzo della Ragione (“Palace of Reason”) in the centre, an antique space now recycled, yet not renovate, to show photography exhibitions. Now on a retrospective on Herb Ritts (1952-2002), whose black and white potraits of models and actors of the Eighties and Nineties have come to be part part of popoular culture.

Born in Los Angeles, Herb, who held a degree in Economics, started his career as a photographer quite randomly. In 1978 he took pictures of his friend Richard Gere, then a young and unknown actor, while waiting for their car to be fixed in the middle of the hot Californian countryside. Who could have imagined that this would have been the beginning of an artistic journey that would make him work with many of the most famous folks in the Western star-system? He had an innate sense for composition, but also studied Greek statuary and the works of Bruce Weber and Man Ray among others, often referencing them in his pics.

H. Ritts, Richard Gere, San Bernardino, California, USA, 1978.

The exhibition reconstructs his whole career, dividing it in three main phases or themes of interest: the body as cult, Ritt’s trip to Kenya in 1994 and finally portaits of famous personalities. His sense of sacred emanates from the naked bodies displayed in the first section as something almost moving. He was keen on natural light and detailed every little feature of an image to make a body look perfect, timeless, god-like. Observing his works, you can experience a sort of synesthesia, because through your sight you can feel the perfect smoothness of the model’s satin skin, the interplay between the heat of the sun and the soothing shadow on the body, the power of this machine that our physicality is. His collaborations with fashion houses such as Versace or Calvin Klein, just to cite a couple, helped defining the body as an idol in the post-modern era, where fitness and fashion were becoming increasingly popoular. Yet I find there is some kind of fragility in his compositions, maybe a Sehnsucht for a perfection that doesn’t exist in real life; thus these beautiful photographies become mementoes for the natural decay none of us can escape.

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The group of pictures on the Maasai popoulation are maybe separate, an interlude between the many glamorous collaborations this photographer experienced, yet they present the same hieratic power, the same pursuit of a sacred dimension. I don’t know if he would have accepted it, however the characterisation of this trip as his “African period” by the curators reflect the old Western conceptions on Africa as an indifferentiated dark area where mysterious and unintelligible are the key elements. This reiterates a bias that is completely out of date, as discussed in a conference by artist Hassan Musa that I reviewed here.

H. Ritts, Maasai woman and child, Kenya, Africa, 1993

H. Ritts, Two giraffes crossed, Kenya, Africa, 1993

The potraits section is both fun and melancholic. Herb’s aim when taking a portrait was to capture the inside, making visible the personality of the sitter. The use of black and white in this instance is very helpful; it reduces the composition to simplicity and emphasises shadows and features. The resulting  images are incredibly powerful and evocative not only of the model’s character, but also of the photographer’s sensibility. I should remark here that the choice of black and white obviously makes an impact on how we behold and compare photographs and reality. Herb’s work being situated in the second half of the XIX century was very influential in shaping the perception of black and white as “pure” and “essential” and, to a certain extent, more apt to represent beauty.

H. Ritts, Jack Nicholson I, IV, III, II, London, UK, 1988

The exhibition is overall well structured and contains many valuable gelatine silver prints that were all produced while Herb was still alive. The explicative panels are interesting and smartly disposed. They give information without too much distracting the viewer from the main experience of seeing. I didn’t find the audioguide, which is included in the price, particularly useful.

Herb Ritts – In equilibrio (“Herb Ritts – In balance”) runs until 5th June 2016. Entry 12€, 10€ concessions.

Useful links:

Official page: http://www.palazzodellaragionefotografia.it/portfolio/dal-20-febbraio-al-5-giugno-2016herb-rittsherb-ritts

The Conformist

Helen Bullock, Window installation.

Set in the very central Belmacz space, The Conformist is truly an unusual show, linking modern to contemporary artists, as well as art itself to fashion and jewellery design. Main theme of the exhibition is the question on conformity/deviance, and its declination through the passing of time. The twenty-one artists included share a reflection on the moral and aesthetic codes of Western society. Their works are the result of this creative thinking, and they can be of the most different register, from serious to playful, form ironic to melanchonic, from sharp to mellow. Here’s just a taste of what you will find if you go to visit it.

Helen Bullock, coming from textile design, has created a window installation characterised by strong colours, as well as a floor decoration for the lower ground. Her vivid contribution, featuring red brush strokes on the window, torn textile with a floreal (or phallic?) allusion, handmade bracelets and a long knotted cloth hanging from the ceiling is instrumental in driving the viewer inside the exhibition space.

The curator and artist Paul Kindersley has chosen two main sites of inspiration: the first is In Youth is Pleasure (1945), a novel by Denton Welch, a worn copy of which is available to flicker through, dealing with the sensual fantasies and erotic experiences of an obsessive teenager during a non-specified summertime. The second is the flamoboyant figure of Lady Emma Hamilton (1765-1815), well-known for her extravagance and a symbol of Romantic love because of her wretched love affair with Lord Nelson (1758-1805). Her presence is announced to be the red thread of the exhibition since entering the gallery: She enigmatically beams from an etching (copy of a painting by the portraitis George Romney), her head covered with a pure-white veil. Exactly in front of her, Helen Chadwick’s Ruin (1986) parallels an interest in the body as main agent of conformation or not to the mainstream of aesthetics. The late artist’s naked body, in contrast with Emma’s covered attire, twists in an unconfortable yet intriguing pose, while with her left hand she covers her face from direct eye-contact with the viewer, and rests the right hand on a skull, probably referencing Shakespeare. Behind her, a still-image of  fruit decomposition completes the work, where the artist is both photographer and photographed, maker and object, in a game of attraction-repulsion with the viewer that challenges the Platonic conception of beauty as positive attribute.

Two video installations, one by Kindersley himself (Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes, 2014), one by Julie Verhoeven (Phlegm & Fluff, 2015), make use of the body too in addressing, in different ways, questions of genre, sex, perversity, grotesque. I found that watching each of them with the relevant soundtrack, while the other was in silent mode, would give a completely different atmosphere to the entire exhibition. Interesting how different music enables diverse emotional responses to the same space.

Works by David Parkinson.

The exhibition also features some charming pieces of jewelry, like the sophisticated gold string with charms by Julia Muggenburg recalling again Lady Emma in its ancient style. Roman coins, red coral, black pearls and citrine drops, as suggested by James Cahill in his introduction to the exhibition, recall different aspects of Lady Emma’s personality, while the string itself let us face an ambiguity – chastity belt or erotic ankle necklace?

I find The Conformist an interesting experiment of mixing fields. It is imaginative and witty. I won’t steal the pleasure of surprise by giving away too much of it! If you are looking for a fresh, nonconformist show, visit The Conformist at Belmacz show room, until 16th April 2016. Entry is free.

Useful links: http://www.belmacz.com/gallery/

All pictures credits: http://www.belmacz.com/gallery/current

Paul Housley, Head of an English Iconoclast, 2016, glazed painted clay, 8x14x20cm.

Annie Leibovitz’s WOMEN

This morning I got the chance to know (East) London a bit more and I patiently waited for the Overground to take me to Wapping. This maritime borough hosts the latest travelling exhibition by U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz, WOMEN: New Portraits. Starting off as a photojournalist, Annie (born 1949) has gained international recognition since the 1970s, specialising in portraits. She has worked for Rolling Stone and Vogue among others, producing some of the most famous pictures in the Western popular culture.

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station

The WOMEN project was born some fifteen years ago, as the joint effort by Annie and the writer and activist Susan Sontag (1933-2004) to help women empowerment within contemporary society. The “update” I visited today actually deals mainly with portraits of famous women mainly coming from the U.S., whether by birth or education.
The arrangement of the display is very interesting. A former hydraulic power station gives an unusual the setting for the exhibition. Only a few photographs are actually pinned on a wide board in the main room, each of them carrying a biographical note on the subject, which helps situating her in contemporary history. However, I found the script to be quite small and difficult to read because of the natural light reflecting from the plexiglass.

Most of the works instead are displayed on two maxi-screens made up by different tv screens assembled together. Therefore, the images can result out of their axis at times, which cripples the quality of the experience. Moreover, the choice of video display doesn’t allow the viewer to behold a picture for as long as one wishes, and even if you wanted to wait for that same image to come back on the screen, you would wait at length because the queued works are so many!

Nevertheless, I loved the portraits as motivational pieces for everyone in the world towards gender equality, and the evolving notions of respect and self-consciousness during time. They also help people to get into contact with powerful female figures in today’s world, some of whom I wasn’t aware of. Maybe it is not surprising, but I felt more interested in the portraits of those women I didn’t know rather than in the familiar and almost always present figures of, just to pick two, Aung San Suu Kyi and Adele.

Annie Leibovitz, Alice Waters and her daughter Fanny Singer, Hillview Farms, Gillette, New Jersey, 2015.

Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman, New York City, 2012.

At any rate (passing over my personal ignorance), as mentioned all of the women portrayed for this new part of the project are somehow rich and famous, apart from Denise Manong, who deals with AIDS in South Africa. I do not know whether this was the artist’s intention or it was so by will of the commissioning Swiss finance firm UBS. This interest is only partly mitigated by a few pictures coming from the older part of the project, featuring four unknown casino dancers both in their costumes and as they appear in their daily life (many photos for the original project also had an important commissioner, e.g. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue).

Overall the experience is enjoyable and enables some critical questions. What is the role of the woman nowadays? What makes a woman? How many stereotypes have been deconstructed, how many are still common? Is the dualism male – female a cultural tag? The foreword to the exhibition by feminist Gloria Steinem vividly paints an holistic approach to humanity and its affairs – I like to think that the ex-hydraulic power station was chosen as a metaphor of the fresh use that we can give to old, worn concepts. From the backwall of the exhibition space, as suspended between past and present, the still image of Queen Elizabeth II in her White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace towers on all the other all-shifting portraits, sending a somewhat ironic yet politically strong message.

And then, is photography art? Can we capture something of an individual’s personality from these mere instants? A bonus point is that the exhibition comes with no gift shop, giving some relief from having to pass through the commodified versions of these exquisite portraits. Instead, visitors can enter a second, smaller room furnished with a big wooden table, 1900 lamps and some very cosy armchairs, where you can enjoy browsing thorugh plenty of old and new catalogues of Annie’s work, as well as Cartier-Bresson’s and Cindy Sherman’s.

The exhibition space.

WOMEN: New Portraits is on until February 7th at
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, London E1W .
Opening Times: from Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 18:00, except on Friday 10:00 – 20:00.
Entrance is free and there is no booking required.

Useful links:
UBS official exhibition page: www.ubs.com/microsites/annie-leibovitz/en/tour/london

PANGAEA II @ Saatchi Gallery

As I entered the luminous space of the Saatchi Gallery with a friend, a week ago, I was suddenly rapt into a quiet, ethereal world, where the silence was not even interrupted by the thundering rain outside, and the artworks on display would simply but blodly disclose themselves in all their beauty, almost challenging you to fade away and leave the stage to the unfolding of their meanings.

The artists presented in the exhibition “Pangaea II: New Art from Africa and Latin America” come from these continents, and some of them had already shown their works in a previous collective exhibition, held at the Saatchi Gallery last year, across Spring, Summer and Autumn 2014. The earlier show was named “Pangaea”, so that the second was clearly linked to the first in the extent in which they both displayed contemporary artists coming from economically developing parts of the world that are miles and miles away from each other, but can reunite through art (as the probably geographically were millennia ago).

The show was divided into different rooms, onto two floors of the gallery, with no explanation whatsoever of the works, which most of the time were presented only by a plain collective label at the entrance of every room, stating the basic information (author, title, year, medium, size). This gave a chance for attentive and meditative looking at the pieces, without focusing on written text as we are so much used to. In this case, though, a bit of knowledge of the background of every artist would have been indispensable to get a better understanding of their works. I had done my homework research before reaching the gallery, so I felt enough comfortable in the sole presence of the artworks, but I am not sure the friend who was with me had the same kind of experience. At any rate, the way the objects were presented, the ubiquitous white light cascading from the ceiling and probably the silent gallery environment itself gave space for personal reflection and I soon lost sight of my mate, getting back to him only at the shop entrance. He told me he had really enoyed the show.

Many of the works contained a political or socio-economical reference to the countries the artist belongs to. Some addressed a blue reflection on burocracy and the way human beings are swallowed by technology and urbanization. Others would tackle the power-games in which an individual must mix him or herself up in in order to gain political authority and prestige. Others again would reflect on the situation of the poorest sections of society.

I particularly felt an association with the series of paintings by Dawit Abebe (1978, Ethiopia), giving a portrait of ailing figures always turning their back to the viewer and to the worldly reality, from which nevertheless they are surrounded in the form of official papers, tickets, ties, …The melancholy they aroused was the same one feels when you ask yourself if this is really the only way things could be.

Dawit Abebe, No.2 Background 1, 2014, mixed media painting, 150×130 cm

Dawit Abebe, No.2 Background 5, 2014, mixed media painting, 150×130 cm

Dawit Abebe, No.2 Background 3, 2014, mixed media painting, 150×130 cm

Ephrem Solomon’s (1983, Ethiopia) Political Game 3 reminded me of a fish in a sea full of sharks:

Ephrem Solomon, Political Game 3, 2012, woodcut and mixed media, 85×86 cm

Armand Boua’s (1978) humble carboards well fitted his reflection on the hinumanity he experiences in everyday-life in Abidjan (Ivory Coast):

Armand Boua, various works, 2013, tar and acrylic on cardboard, 82×95 cm

Other works had a humorous vein than made me openly smile, like Alexandre da Cunha’s (1969, Brazil) nude series, in which the author uses found objects and different media to obtain a painting which is also a sculpture, conveying an ironic message on the way we see and appropriate material objects. I particularly enjoyed this piece:

Alexandre da Cunha, Nude VI, 2012, hats, canvas, thread, 220x300x17.5 cm

A couple of artists, namely Alida Cervantes (1972, California, U.S.A.), Virginia Chihota (1983, Zimbabwe), but also Eddy Ilunga Kamuanga (1991, Democratic Republic of the Congo) dealt with feminine figures in different ways. I felt a strong connection with Virginia’s reflection on marriage and the developing of personal relationships that she conveys through her work Raising Your Own (Kurera Wako). Unfortunately I was not able to take a picture of it, but her delicate, almost phantom-like bride, her white skin almost melting away with the unnatural white background, gave me a sense of strength and impotence at the same time. She stands beside her husband-to-be, both wrapped in an unusual black veil, which shadows them from the viewer and make them close and fearfully intimate. Their feet are bare, and the woman covers her womb with her black hands as a blood stain widens on her white wedding dress.

Eddy’s women are the heroines of the new cultural diversity which is emerging in his hometown, Kinshasa. He is strongly influenced both by traditions and pop culture and the resulting works seems to me vibrant and positive. I really appreciated the use he made of written word in his paintings, a device that conveys particular meanings (if you can read the language!) and helps the old mixing with the new.

Eddy Ilunga Kamuanga, Voile, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 120×100 cm

However, my favourite pieces were the ones welcoming the visitor in the first room of the exhibition. I left them for last because of their power, their marvellous quality as art objects and the activism that they inspire. I am talking about the selection of works by Diego Mendoza Imbachi (1982, Colombia), who links gardening and art-making in a process that juxtaposes the natural elements of the forest with the harmful industrialisation that more and more affects the landscape in South America. Diego truly is a poet, even in the choice of titles. His medium, mainly graphite, reflects his intention of giving space, in some ways, to a reconciliation between human destructivness and natural life. His works, of very large dimensions, make you feel like you really are in some magical forest made up of beautifully crafted, tall, silent trees whose branches resemble in some ways electrical wires. The element of sacred is surely present, it makes you reflect on the beauty and delicacy of nature and on the stubborn dullness of multi-national corporations. After staring at these works, my Greenpeace soul aroused, and even talking about it now, some days after the exhibition has already closed its doors, I still feel a sense of courage, of urgence for doing everything I can to respect the planet. Now I can really start my day in a positive, proactive way.

Diego Mendoza Imbachi, The Poetics of Reflection, 2014, graphite and binder on canvas, 300×600 cm

Pangaea II: New Art form Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, 11 March – 17 September 2015.

Useful links:

The exhibition’s webpage has links to the bios and abstracts of the partecipant artists, and it’s a mine for more information: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/pangaea_II/

Photographer Ketaki Sheth On Belonging

There is a very interesting even though tiny exhibition going on at the National Portrait Gallery. It is entitled “On Belonging: Photographs of Indians of African Descent” and brings together some of the beautiful black and white pictures captured by Ketaki Sheth (born in 1957, Mumbai) during her project among the Sidi.

“On Belonging”, National Portrait Gallery, Room 33. Until 31 August 2015.

The Sidi, also known as Siddhi, are a community of no more that 70 000 people, living in different areas of India and Pakistan. What makes them interesting is that they descend from Bantu people (Southeast Africa) who in the past centuries were active on the trading routes of the Indian Ocean. While it is true some were merchants and mercenaries, many of them were introduced in the Indian subcontinent as slaves by the Portuguese. Sidi communities still retain African features, still nowadays they are “Indians”. Even if they may be still considered a minority, they have been dwelling Indian regions for more than five hundreds years now. Their experience fits perfectly the discourse on the African Diaspora, on identity and cultural membership.

Ketaki Sheth, Community Doyen Haseens, Badshah with her Sixth Grandson, Ratanpur, 2006

The exhibition deals exactly with these themes. Through the pictures the visitor can experience a story, the story of a cultural group that, although considering Africa as an ancestral womb, has opened itself to a new, mixed identity, accepting in all respect the “Indian” way of life. In particular, many pictures from the display were taken in occasion of a wedding. These portraits are stunning not only for the beauty of the composition itself, but also because it is very easy to pay attention the tale they tell you without words nor colours. I find the black and white choice effectively renders the question of identity on which the artist wanted to focus.

Most of all, as I just mentioned, the photographs on display are portraits. The issue of cultural identity is then linked to the one of personal identity, individuality. It is impossible not to ask oneself how much culture shapes the individual. The case of Sidi people let us think of ourselves, let me think of the chimera of individualism of which the Western tradition is so proud of.

The Catalogue

A nice show, for free, just one room. You can see it in 10 minutes, or stay the entire afternoon, going from one picture to another, from one face to another. You can also browse the catalogue sitting on the bench provided, and discover many more beautiful shots taken by Sheth alongside with her explanation of them. But just until August 31st.

Many thanks to Esmeralda for giving me the first piece of info regarding this artist and her exhibition.)

Useful links:
National Portrait Gallery Exhibition Page: http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2015/on-belonging-photographs-of-indians-of-african-descent.php

More info on the Sidi communities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddi