MADS MIL@NO PHOTO AWARD CATA DEF

Curated by Art Directors Carlo Greco and Alessandra Magni

Critical texts by Art Curators

Alessia Perone

Cecilia Terenzoni

Erika Gravante

Erminia Abbuonandi

Federica D’Avanzo

Francesca Brunello

Giorgia Massari

Giulia Calì

Guendalina Cilli

Lorenza Traina

Marta Graziano

Mery Malaventura

Silvia Grassi

Vanessa Viti

“If you take pictures of a stranger, the minute you click the shutter, that person stops being a

stranger, because you will always bring it with you.”

There is so much truth in these words by Giuseppe Tornatore. It is not a factor of equipment, of light, of location

or even of the subject in front of the lens: when a picture provides us inexplicable sensations, there is only one

reason. It’s called trip back, starting from the two-dimensionality of the photo: a journey into it, that will allow

us to enjoy the story, trying to perceive “why” and then “how” we got out the result, unconsciously accessing to

all information that characterize it. We will know the purpose and finally we will witness a genetic transmission,

just like a gesture of love. Study, experimentation, refinement and finally coherence, will be fundamental and

determining elements that can be traced back to the artist’s style and his DNA: only through small gestures of

analysis, we will be able to understand, even years later, who made that specific photograph. They are rare gifts,

the balance between feelings and thoughts, between rationality and perception, gracefulness and simplicity,

delicacy and elegance, dialogue through a look, elegant composition dominated by energy and visual impact,

refinement to the maximum exaltation of beauty. John Berger, writer-legend, art critic, poet, essayist, playwright

and winner of the 1972 Booker Prize with the novel G., stated in one of his writings that “you learn to read a

photograph as you learn to read an imprint, or a cardiogram”. The goal is always the same: learn to see. We

must learn to see before to photograph, but to photograph can become a way to learn to see.

“To photograph is to hold the breath when all our faculties converge to capture fleeting reality:

at this point the image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”

(Henry Cartier Bresson)

Concept by Alessandra Magni, Art Director

Alex Kosyak

“It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not.” (Charles Baudelaire)

Alex Kosyak is a Ukrainian photographer who was born in 1984 in Romny. Always passionate about art, he

is attracted in particular by the surrealist movement, especially by the works of Salvador Dalì. Only later he

approached photography, certainly influenced by the typical characteristics of Surrealism. His photos are often

set in city centers, but it would be an understatement to define Alex as a street photographer. His photography

does not want to be a document of everyday life on the streets, but a continuous research on the dimension that

the body assumes in relation to architecture. One thing that photography fails to do, in fact, is to communicate

the real dimensions of things. In each image of the triptych presented here, we can see how the presence of the

body acts as a useful element for understanding the proportions. The architecture of his photographs engulfs

all the space and the bodily element remains at the mercy of it without awareness. Alex’s language is mainly

characterized by highly contrasted blacks and whites, which convey a feeling of restlessness despite the regularity

of the lines and respect for the composition. Buildings that now graze the sky, ever taller buildings, magnificent

ever more imposing architectures envelop our daily life. The sensation that exhales from these images increases

a doubt of malaise. All these buildings do not allow the vision of a real horizon, of space and very often also of

the sun. Masses of people move from one city to another every day. They live and work in large urban centers.

The relationship created over the years between man and the urban landscape is constantly expanding. Will we

be able to survive far from our origins?

Art Curator Francesca Brunello

Alex Kosyak

Personality shadow

Alex Kosyak

Step

Alex Kosyak

To avoid oblivion

André Mascarenhas

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.” (Gabriel García Márquez)

André Mascarenhas is a Brazilian-American photographer who lives and works in Berlin. He choose street

photography to express his vision of the world. In this photograph he captures a very particular fragment of

everyday life. Our eyes do not meet those of a person on the street, as often happens in this photographic genre,

but those of a dog in a parked car. The way he looks at us raises several questions because it is not just any gaze,

but rather something that calls our attention in a visceral way. The windows become like mirrors that reflect

the surrounding world. This dog seems to observe the outside world like from the inside a of a bubble. While

we are out in the world caught up in our routine, work and responsibilities, he is alone in the silence of that car,

observing and intimidating us. We only see him and we can barely distinguish what is inside his bubble. The

glass acts as a shield to the outside world. It seems to want to tell us not to forget our intimacy and so to be

swallowed up by the frenzy of everyday life. It reminds us of the importance of the warmth of the environment

in which we retire when the day comes to an end. That space for ourselves that no one can enter at all.


André Mascarenhas

Dog car reflections

Andres Herrera

“Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.”

(Le Corbusier)

Andres Herrera is a Colombian photographer. His research is strongly influenced by the interest he has in design.

In fact, his photography is made up of geometric shapes resulting from perspectives of buildings and glimpses

of architecture, which no longer seem to assert this role. In some moments, we find ourselves immersed in

places where the third dimension disappears, leaving us surrounded only by lines that cross the visual space, to

meet in specific points and then reconnect with others. The use of black and white transforms architecture into

a real uninhabited skeleton. Andres empties the buildings to the bone, to recover their hidden lines, precision,

shapes and intersecting planes. The skies turn black and majestic white lattices rise above them, glowing in

the dark. It breaks the limits of reality to abstraction, to take us to another world and then, suddenly, the light.

Colored surfaces, less violent shapes and lines are now the main subjects of his photographs. A pastel orange

envelops the blue of the sky in which a palm tree appears and a lilac wall is the backdrop to three salmoncolored

openings. In this dualism, the only trace of the man are these buildings, the earth no longer seems to be

inhabited. Our shape prevents us from belonging to this abstract world, a world of otherworldly geometries and

balances. What Andres takes us to, is an utopian journey made of symmetries and visual proportions, far from

reality, where lines, planes and points are sovereigns of a perfectly organized space.


Andres Herrera

Converge

Andres Herrera

Curbside Palm

Andres Herrera

Living in repetition

Andres Herrera

Ornage-Geometric-Windows

Andres Herrera

The Gap between us

Angela Stout & Neysa Wellington

The painter, Angela M. Stout, and the photographer, Neysa Wellington, both from North Carolina, collaborate

in the realization of the project “Suppression”. Welligton takes a photograph of an African American man

covering his nose and mouth with the American flag. The photo is black and white, except for the flag that

stands out from the composition thanks to the vivid colors. With great skill, Stout makes an exact copy of the

photograph using acrylic paint as her medium. The realism that emerges from this painting is stunning. The

work on display expresses a strong need for protest in the wake of recent police brutality events in the States,

which resulted in the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Unfortunately, the racial injustice that affects America,

and the world in general, is not a recent problem. It has deeper roots that stem from the exploitation and slavery

that African populations were subjected from as early as the 15th Century. Angela and Neysa express through

art the need for equality and belonging. The American flag, the visual focus of the work, highlights the fact that

all citizen of American must be treated as equals, with the same rights and duties. “Suppression” is therefore a

work with a strong message, a message that needs to be heard and, above all, understood. Injustice, amorality

and persecution must end.

Art Curator Giorgia Massari

Angela Stout & Neysa Wellington

Suppression

Behrouz EZ

“What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph

mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” (Roland Barthes)

Behrouz’s photographs tell of city life, strictly in analog. In 2017, in the streets of London, Behrouz bought an

old Leica in a flea market and began to photograph the street. When he takes the camera in his hand, he is aware

that perfect photography doesn’t exist. The process that leads to shooting becomes much more important. In

the images he captures from the outside world, the continuous oscillation between movement and waiting is

evident: hurry is the engine that regulates people’s lives. In his lens, however, the hurry comes alive with a new

life, made of geometry, lines and solitude. So, the subway, the pedestrian crossing and the race in the morning

to get to work on time become, for Behrouz EZ, a pretext to tell the story of the modern world in a poetic key.

Photographing, in this way, becomes an aesthetic act and, at the same time, cathartic, because it forces everyone

to reflect on an otherwise lost moment. There is no difference between the process and the result, since what

remains is the image of a unique movement immortalized forever in a click. Behrouz creates situations that

are repeated: and yet, in every photograph, the running, the waiting for public transport, the traffic lights, the

pedestrian crossings never seem the same. Everything, in his images, is a reflection of the flow of urban life,

of social progress that goes hand in hand with loneliness. Behrouz recounts today’s society with a personal

style, that does not give up geometry but not even emotions. As Roland Barthes affirms, what you need to

look for in a photograph is the punctum, that is, the sudden emotion aroused by any element impressed in the

photograph. When you look at Behrouz’s photographs, you can’t help but think of punctum as a detail, which

moves an unspeakable, spontaneous and unpredictable emotion: a crossed leg, a foot inclined slightly upwards,

a tie moved by the unstoppable race, a hand that opens a handbag can lead the observer to rediscover the very

essence of photography.

Art Curator Giulia Calì

Behrouz EZ

Between The Lines

Behrouz EZ

Dancing In The Street

Behrouz EZ

Yes I’m Lonely

Boris Milojević

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

Boris Milojević is a Croatian photographer who lives and works in Canada. In recent years he has concentrated

his work, documenting the protests aimed at safeguarding the planet from climate change. This image is part

of a 2019 project dedicated to Toronto’s “Fridays for Future” movement. On this occasion, people decided to

demonstrate by adopting an impactful communication, dressing their bodies with costumes and symbols that

recall the theme of death. Black and red are the dominant colors, one indicates death, the other blood. People

gathered in a procession accompany a coffin through the streets of the city. Women, with veils over their faces,

are already suffering from the loss incurred. Boris was able to capture the energy spread in the air, a combination

of anger and determination, as well as anguish. The fate of the planet is in human hand. We will suffer the

consequences of our actions and determine what will be best for the future. If the Earth stops breathing, then,

we will carry the weight of its body on our shoulders.


Boris Milojević

Extinction Rebellion

Carly Tyll

The Canadian artist Carly Tyll creates works in media mix, her mastery in blending photography and painting

produces unique works. In the “ Milano Photoaward” exhibition are exposed two series of different genres: the

first, entitled “Arcadia”, is composed of three panels in which Tyll adds painting to photography; the second,

entitled “Phantom”, is composed of four computer-edited photographs and subsequently concluded by the use

of the marker directly on the printed photograph. The first series “Arcadia” sees as the protagonist a woman

who releases an intense sexual energy, even more accentuated by the addition of sketches of painting. The

juxtaposition between the emotions released by the woman and the energy transmitted by the gestures of the

splashes, creates in the viewer an “exploding” sensation. Even more, the choice to use warm colors, such as red

and orange, combined with white and a cold blue, creates a strong visual contrast that gives the work a strong

emotional charge. Totally different is the message given by the series “Phantom”: in each panel are represented

different people of which you can only glimpse the true appearance. The figures are in fact superimposed by

human skeletons, as if they were X-ray scanned. The addition of the inscriptions: “I am he”, “as you are he”,

“as you are me” and “and we are all together”, accentuate the message that the artist wants to give. A message

of union. We’re all the same, we’re all made of bones, whether you’re a man or a woman or whatever ethnicity

you belong to. We’re human, we’re part of the same world. It’s a strong message that reaches the viewer

and confronts us with a problem that humanity still faces: the acceptance of the other people and the need to

recognize them equal to you.


Carly Tyll

Arcadia - 1

Carly Tyll

Arcadia - 2

Carly Tyll

Arcadia - 3

Carly Tyll

Phantom - 1

Carly Tyll

Phantom - 2

Carly Tyll

Phantom - 3

Carly Tyll

Phantom - 4

Cecilia Albrektsson

“It is my hope that photography may fall in line with all the other arts and with her infinite

possibilities, do things strange and more fascinating than the most fantastic dreams.”

(Alvin Langdon Coburn)

Cecilia Albrektsson is a Swedish artist who started making art with acrylic painting and then moved on to digital

photography. In her work Shine it is not important what is represented, the energy that transpires even just by

observing it is strong and enveloping. The artist herself states that when she creates she never has a well-defined

idea at the beginning. She gets carried away by the artistic moment and her emotions from the moment she

begins to create it, so she never knows what the final result could be. What emerges from this is a play of lights

and colors that chains and captures the visitor’s attention and takes him on a journey with himself. The effect

of a kaleidoscope symbolically leads the viewer to create a link with the work based on the present and past

sensations in a very intimate and experiential abstractionism. This kind of private and personal storytelling takes

us back to the dawn of American abstract photography of the late 19th century. Alvin Langdon Coburn, one of

the first exponents of abstract photography in America, created a photographic series (Vortographs) developing

an apparatus called vortoscope, a sort of kaleidoscope in which the photographed objects acquired a geometric

and kaleidoscopic aspect, almost completely erasing the shapes of the original image. If one thinks about the

function of mechanical and descriptive reproduction of reality, the word “abstraction” used for photography

might seem a paradox. However, the fact that a photograph is difficult to recognize is not incompatible with

one of its definition, “a printing light on a photosensitive surface”. Whatever its nature, the photographic image

always remains an image or representation of something, even if the photographer uses various processes to

make the viewer not understand what it really represents.

Art Curator Erminia Abbuonandi

Cecilia Albrektsson

Shine

Craig Preston Roberts

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter –

in the eye.” (Charlotte Bronte)

Craig Preston Roberts is a New Zealand photographer who lives and works in London. Obsessed with the

documentation of life on the streets, he focuses his attention above all on the homeless and on the degradation in

the suburbs. Through his portraits we see closely the people who live on the fringes of our society. Craig creates

a contact with them. A dialogue and dig deeper before taking his photographs. He discovers their stories and

wants to narrate those for us through their gazes. Tired and empty eyes that generate conflicting sensations in the

observer. Fear, emptiness, loneliness and melancholy. Their gazes speak to us, drag and suck us into their lives.

Lives so far from our eyes, so far from our mind and so difficult to conceive in our normality. Yet they are there

too and have a lot to tell. Each of them continues to live by struggling every day, each with their own identity.

We can read every detail of their faces, every wrinkle on their skin, their fingernails, every hair, every dress they

wear. The eyes are the access key in daily communication with anyone, they are the fulcrum of our feelings,

what we don’t say passes through them and a good reader knows how to understand. As we often hear, the eyes

are the mirror of the soul and in Craig’s photographs, each person is like a book to read. Every particular and

every detail contribute to tell a story.



Here’s to the crazy ones


Ezekiel


On every corner


The Hustler


The King of 49th Street

Daniel Inacio

Daniel Inacio is a young Portuguese photographer who prefers monochrome shots. His photographic production

focuses mainly on the realisation of series shots, connected by a single basic concept. One of his last works is

the series entitled “Border”, of which three shots are exhibited at the gallery M.A.D.S in Milan. The title refers

to the moment in which Inacio went to the land border between Portugal and Spain, at the time of its reopening.

The border remained closed for months due to the emergency caused by the spread of the Covid-19 virus. The

shots capture the passage of some cyclists on the border bridge between the two states. The play of light and

shadow is predominant. The light comes from the right and is behind the subjects, that become shadows of

which only the outlines are delineated, silhouettes. The movement is perceived thanks to the shadow of the

geometric structure of the bridge, which creates elongated and intertwined lines on the roadway. The perfect

geometric background contrasts with the chaos dictated by the shadows, creating a strong visual contrast. The

ability of Inacio is to capture with drama the first moments of freedom of people, remained closed for months

within the walls of the house. It captures the freedom to change state, to move without limits.


Daniel Inacio

Border - 1

Daniel Inacio

Border - 2

Daniel Inacio

Border - 3

David Houghton

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s

(or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing

it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” (Susan Sontag)

“On the Way to Shimoda” is the work of the British photographer David Houghton. Although his origins are

Western, his research has always moved to Japan, where most of his photographic repertoire comes from. His

style is characterized by the condensation of several images placed side by side on a single surface, with clear

references to the art of Agnes Martin and the photography of the Becher couple. David’s analysis is immersed

in the theme of passing time, analyzing moment by moment the details that every moment brings with it. It

amplifies and expands the use of the photographic medium by pushing it beyond the single image. Every

moment ends up breaking into many small details. David abstracts reality by marking precise points in order to

document a time frame, in this case, the journey to reach Shimoda from Fujisawa, Japan. A journey of almost

three hours, documented in three hundred and twelve shots, very precise moments useful for the description

of the urban landscape that runs along the entire route of the train along the Bay of Sagami. The passage of

time narrows and expands, our perception changes in line with our mood and the situation around us. David,

during this journey, noted many details that, to the naked eye and in motion, he would not have had time to see.

He marks specific points on what could be seen as a photographic map. Now it is up to us to read this image

dedicating it the appropriate time.


David Houghton

On the way to Shimoda

David Ortiz Fuertes

“History teaches us that from the beginning, painting, sign, image and creation moved in parallel,

intersecting manual and mechanical skills in an almost secret, hidden way.”

(Luca Massimo Barbero)

Photography and painting are historically distinct and sometimes opposed in common thought, but, already from the

end of the nineteenth century, they have sought dialogue, confrontation and union, that is not always easy. In fact,

already at the birth of the first images of the protophotography, the photographers tried to add color and the artists

immediately grasped the ability of photography to stop the most authentic truth. Starting from the second half of the

twentieth century, this meeting becomes closer, and the riches of oil and the transparencies of watercolor, the scratches

of the pencils and the hieroglyphs of the marker, have been able to blend and unite with photography. Thus, it was

created what is increasingly emerging as a possible “genre” of extraordinary richness and heterogeneity in the search

for an expression that is contemporary and traditional in the same time. For this event, the artist David Ortiz Fuertes

has created his very personal idea of how painting and photographic images can merge to create works of art with a

new and innovative flavor, but at the same time winks at tradition. David used very different photographic shots as a

starting point and inspiration. For the works entitled “Liberacìon” and “Encerrada” David used two very energetic and

communicative shots by the Spanish photographer Miriam Franco. In the first he managed to recreate the movement

of photography also in the model’s body, through a dynamic and material painting. In the second, however, he created

a sharp contrast between the subject of the shot and the painting: to the closure of the subject and the geometry of the

bars, David contrasted a liveliness of colors and a painting, that transmits energy and joy. Instead, in the work entitled

“Fantasìa en Milàn”, David gave new life to a fashion shot, creating a catwalk for the model with painting and an

innovative design for clothes and accessories, in which we find David’s unmistakable pictorial style. The model dressed

in art and color.

Art Curator Silvia Grassi

David Ortiz Fuertes

Fantasía en Milán

(ph Silvia Grassi)

David Ortiz Fuertes

Encerrada

(ph Miriam Franco)

David Ortiz Fuertes

Liberación

(ph Miriam Franco)

David Shepherd

“It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.”

(Voltaire)

David Shepherd is an English photographer. Since his childhood he has dedicated himself to this form of art,

only to discover his interest in dance photography. In his images the lightness of classical dance emerges, told

through the graceful movements of the dancers, who gently accompany the dresses in motion. But what the

spectator sees of the dance is not what the dancer feels on stage. The effort that belongs to him, even if masterfully

hidden, is not small, the moment of performance requires concentration to balance each movement with the

right expression. In this “Strength and Grace” photograph, David focuses on a detail, the tip of a ballerina’s shoe

which, in ballet, is the place where all body weight is concentrated and where balance and labour meet grace. He

allows us to step onto the stage and see beyond the performance. Our attention is suddenly drawn to a myriad of

details. The traces of dust left by the plaster used to prevent slipping, the curvature of the instep developed with

years of exercise, the lace that tightens the ankle, the creased shoe that tells the story of the dancer, the effort

in the search for perfection. A single instant, the one in which the dancer puts her foot on the ground to lift her

whole being, creating a new shape in the air and giving life to every sensation, in order to convey harmony and

grace to the eyes of the beholder.


David Shepherd

Grace and Strength

DKsight

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” (Pablo Picasso)

Dksight, was born and lives in Belgium. The artist is a self-taught digital photographer with an interest in

portraits and landscapes. He began a series of abstract black and white images during the lockdown period as a

means of expressing and sharing difficult emotions. Whether it is photography or painting, the images tell, the

images represent the sheet of paper on which to lay the ink to tell a story. At first the cameras only worked in

black and white. Then the colors arrived. Today it is certainly easier to get photos with sharp colors, spectacular,

but black and white for many photographers remains an artistic choice, a way to communicate a drama and a

link with something that has been and will not be anymore. Black and white is not a retouching, therefore, it is an

interpretation, which distorts and captures the soul of those who look because it gives the subjects or landscapes

to history. Photography is already in itself an art form with an almost ethereal taste, able to stop an image and

make it eternal; the black and white one, then, takes on an even more timeless and delicate charm, giving the

shot the “great effect” of yesteryear. Dksight uses this interpretation in nostalgic photographs, in which he

necessarily intends to accentuate the perception of time, as in the case of “Stop This!”.In this photo, lights and

shadows become the greatest allies, having a double task: that of making the human mind perceive even the

colors, despite they are not there. Here the eternity and the perception of blocked time, like the historical period

that has seen us protagonists in this last year, are very deep feelings, accentuated by the very strong contrast

used by the artist. The charm of this shot is accompanied by a roundup of emotions that the observer feels

unconsciously in front of a photo without colors. The same ones that intend to represent the soul of the artist,

with such retro and immortal charm.

“A great artist is always before his time or behind it.” (George Moore)

Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo

DKsight

Stop This!

Eric Franklin

Contemporary society constantly places all of us in front of photographic images, in particular images of bodies.

The ideal of beauty we have today comes from what we see in newspapers, on the web or on social media. If

photographs sometimes make bodies perfect, strong and invulnerable, Eric’s work certainly shows something

else. His photographs have fragile and vulnerable bodies as subjects, often referring to a surreal imaginary.

A bandaged body that appears as dead or as a larva, a weak body but that will soon transform and take flight,

overcoming all limits. A chained body, without the possibility of movement, but which has a large eye, which

becomes a symbol of research and intelligence. An eye as a mirror of a more intimate self or as the freedom

to look and think. Eric’s work is of great impact and possesses an enormous aesthetic value, the viewer is

completely captured by the figures that stand out strongly, which appear from black and gloomy backgrounds:

a body that is light and life. The representation of the human body has ancient roots in history, in particular in

art, over the ages the needs of this representation have changed and have taken on different values. When Eric

places a sort of texture above the body as in the photo “Kiela”, he brings to mind the photographs of Ave Pildas,

in fact, using the texture he enhanced the image. Eric, one of a kind, creates photographs that shake souls, that

pose questions, raise doubts. He gives the viewer mystery, reflection and beauty.

Art Curator Vanessa Viti

Eric Franklin

Kiela DSC07051

Eric Franklin

Nicole DSC8847

Eric Franklin

The Box L001830

Evan William Plunkett

“Representing the world with awe and wonder allows me to access it later, remembering rare and

beautiful moments.” (Evan William Plunkett)

Evan William Plunkett is a multimedia artist and his work focuses mainly on photography. Through his works he extrapolates

numerous connections between objects, surfaces and materials. A crucial point of his art is to devise an alternative reality in

which the observer, intrigued and attracted by the unusual, can immerse himself completely. As in “Pole Puddle” where one can

see a bright reflection, in sharp contrast with the greyish tones of the wet tarmac. The mirrored image is a door which connects the

inside with the outside, the real world with a parallel one. One can evince the desire to discover a vision, evocative and pragmatic,

and to tell all that is found in that determined astral dimension, beyond what we can reach just with a simple gaze. Therefore,

what is it real? The reflected surface generates a paradox, a non-existent place capable of creating an alternative universe, an

illusory space where anything can happen. In “Rust Eye”, it is interesting the attention given to an unusual object, covered by the

rust and the effects of time: the whole picture creates a texture rich of cracks almost of natural origin. The observer’s attention is

placed on the subject of the photograph, reducing at minimum any other element. A personal and particular image characterized

by a framing of detail, with bright colors, plays of shapes and coves that define the urban environment that surrounds this figure.

Through this photograph a clear idea can be extrapolated, with the aim of attracting the viewer’s perception, inviting him to

observe the picture always more closely, in order to discover what infinity lies beyond the central hole. Finally, in “Umbrella”

a central and isolated figure is overwhelmed by a dynamic vortex full of emotions and moods. This movement is typical of a

frenetic reality, usual in a contemporary city. The bright red brings energy when it is compared to the other colors in the picture.

This enables to create a beam of light that enhances dynamism, totally eliminating the contours of the various forms. Everything

flows as if it was constantly evolving and the movement is unstoppable: one can prevent and contemplate it while is happening,

or one can freeze it into a static image and break it down into a series of moments, but it is impossible to stop it. Movement is

an intrinsic characteristic, an immutable principle that defines the essence of reality in which every human being lives.

Art Curator Alessia Perone


Umbrella


Pool Puddle


Rust Eye

Federica Lugaro

“I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”

(Vincent van Gogh)

Federica Lugaro, painter, actress and model, approached the world of painting beginning to paint abstract paintings

and using different techniques. Federica Lugaro’s artistic research focuses on the concept of sublime, questioning the

immense. From Dante to Romanticism, analyzing the poetics of Leopardi and the painting of Friedrich, passing through

Foscolo and Van Gogh, many sensitive souls of great artists and poets have been influenced by the relationship with

the unknown and the greatness of the universe, the infinite. The concept of the sublime, that is the fear and beauty that

provokes the sight and thought of the infinite, was born during the Romanticism, the largest and most complex cultural

movement of the first half of the nineteenth century. This dual feeling that is felt before the immensity, derives from

the philosophy of the German thinker Immanuel Kant and became a real ideal in the Romantic age. The movement

focuses on what it feels like, on the most intimate emotions. Man feels the need to show his fragility, he feels small

and afraid in front of the eternal and looks for very current answers on the meaning of existence. The French poet and

art critic Charles Baudelaire stated: “Who says romantic says modern art, ie intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration

towards the infinite expressed with all the means that the arts offer”. Federica, with the work entitled “Assordante”,

wanted to represent this same immensity of which the great artists of the time spoke. The beauty and greatness of

art is precisely the representation of a motion of the soul, a feeling, managing to make it visible without words and

without explanations. In the work, although in its abstract conception, the contemplation of infinity finds its maximum

expression. As defined by the concept of sublime, however, we also see, on the horizon, thanks to the difference in

colors, an abstract landscape that metaphorically lets glimpse the light that calms us and places hope in us. The feeling

is melancholy: the observer seems lost in the immensity of nature that finds the union of earth, sea and sky, in his soul

although small but able to contain all this.

“ I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had

no words for.” (Georgia O’Keeffe)


Federica Lugaro

Assordante

Gala Zabruskova

Gala Zabruskova is Russian photographer whose passion for creating and composing pictures and scenarios

has been with her since she was young. Her major poetic quality is precisely a spontaneous and childlike

gaze, interpreted as a dreamy and fairy-tale way of representation that the time didn’t consume. In order to get

immersed in the artwork’s environment, the viewer should leave behind those superstructures that may pollute

the meanings’ fruition. The photographer encourages the spectator to achieve the truth not merely through

reasoning, but instead through an intuitive and irrational process, looking at things with an amazement and

auroral wonder, as if it were the first time. At the same time, the childlike way of imagining stories is not

always linked to the picture’s message: that fabulous aura is here a form that shapes a more adult and visceral

torment. “I would like to represent one of my conceptual arts «Passionate Amanita», which touches upon a very

acute problem of the modern world – toxicity. Toxic people and toxic relationships – I think most of us have

experienced those” states the photographer. The picture represents therefore an artistic exorcization of what she

may have experienced and suffered in life. Framed by a green natural context, the picture represents a girl dressed

up with a costume of the poisoning mushroom, empathizing that contrast between attraction and repulsion.

“The metaphoric personification of toxicity has been made through the image of the amanita mushroom: it is so

attractive, alluring, and even seductive, but to be safe one is better stay away from it; otherwise it can poison,

affect your life or even kill you.” Because of her passion for fairy-tale, Gala succeeds in staging a picture with a

solid storytelling made of symbols and meanings, following a formula that gives to the audience an immediate

contextualization of what she aims to communicate, though maintaining an irrational and fanciful aesthetics.

Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni

Gala Zabruskova

Passionate Amanita

Gregorio Funes

Gregorio Funes is an Argentine digital artist, based in Cordoba. His work focuses on the relationship between

art and design. He uses images that come from different sources: old books, maps, consumer images of the

networks and famous paintings. Funes takes these already existing images and gives them a new life, a new

meaning and purpose. His work entitled “Surprise!” is a great example of this reuse of images. This Funes’

digital composition is an appropriation of the painting “The surprised nymph” by Edouard Manet, which had

been purchased by the Argentine government in 1914. In “Surprise” the nymph is removed from the natural

setting and is taken to the street. The nymph of Manet becomes a sort of advertising billboard ruined by time

and by the writers’ tags. The artist chooses this context because it reflects the image of Argentine cities where

the walls of buildings are used as “canvases” by which a protest message, often political, is sent. Many of these

messages are related to women’s rights, so Funes decides to use a naked woman, caught in the act of being

watched. The artist does not choose any naked woman, he chooses the nymph of Manet, a work of art that is

therefore not contestable. Gregorio Funes, through a contrast of colors like the bright yellow that surrounds the

figure of the woman, gives prominence to the nymph that seems to belong to that wall since always. The artist

adapted a work of the nineteenth century, giving it a current meaning and making it interact with the people.


Gregorio Funes

Surprice!

Gregory Menard

“Do not fear mistakes – there are none.” (Miles David)

Gregory Menard is a self-taught artist currently living in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a versatile artist and as such

experiences different art forms. From acrylic painting to spray painting, from collage to photography. What Gregory

is pressing is to bring himself out through his own language, outlining a personal style within the most innovative

and up-to-date currents. In photography, the artist considers the body a fundamental means of artistic expression,

using movement and the environment as the theatre of creative activity. The history of photography is made up of

many small innovations that since its official birth, in 1839, have led to what we know today. The Lumière brothers,

already inventors of the cinema, decreed in 1907, the true birth of color photography. The technical difficulties and the

subsequent years to shoot in black and white had accustomed the vision to the grayscale. But it is the communicative

power of colours that transforms them into a real photographic language. The French photographer Henry Cartier-

Bresson is recognized as one of the greatest photographers in history, with his unmistakable style has characterized

the photography of the twentieth century. It is not by chance that it is still nicknamed “the eye of the century”. What

characterizes his photography is the ability to grasp the moment. In this he was certainly a forerunner, since in the

immediate post-war period photography was conceived primarily as something to be done in the studio. For Gregory,

as for Bresson, real photography is the one that takes place in the street, made of spontaneous moments and little

conjecture. No pose makes one shot truer than another. This is precisely the artist’s research, which through his street

shots tries to highlight the everyday life of people. “Inception” metaphorically indicates something that begins and

takes shape. What the observer dwells on as an observer are the feet, deliberately placed in the foreground and with a

very important symbolic meaning. It is the steps of life that will lead us somewhere, we do not know where. But the

important thing is to walk and build for ourselves the journey. The life.

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

(Robert Henri)


Gregory Menard

Inception

Héctor Lopéz

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” (Pablo Picasso)

Héctor López was born, lives and works in Madrid. City that allowed him to study and practice art. His inspiration comes from

some of the greatest contemporary artists such as Mirò and Picasso. Artistic research finds its basis in abstract poetics. A trend

born in the early decades of the twentieth century that tends to conquer total freedom from any imitative form, in an attempt

to abolish content and express emotions only through form and color, excluding any relationship of the artistic form with the

aspects of the sensitive world. Quite peculiar to the artistic experiences of the 20th century, this new form of expression has its

roots in previous artistic experiences with Van Gogh, and in the no less stimulating intellectual and social achievements of the

late 9th century. Parallel to the success of the expression abstract art, consolidated as opposed to figurative art, manifests itself

in the same semantic context. Héctor López makes abstractionism his artistic philosophy, interpreting an illusory and abstract

reality from nature, providing the creation of a more new and concrete. “In the Garden II” uses color spots to recreate flowers

and natural elements. Flowers have always aroused interest among artists, poets and philosophers. Since ancient times, in the

various cultures, they have been sacred symbols, essential elements of worship and protagonists of scientific studies. The first

flower depicted was the blue lotus, nymphaea caerulea, in the wall paintings of the Egyptian tombs; this represented the Sun and

rebirth. In classical culture many plants are associated with deities, or are metaphors of human vices and virtues, as in the myth

of Narcissus. With impressionists, including some passionate gardeners, the theme of flowers is among the privileged for new

experimentations. Renoir, Manet, until the water lilies of Monet. The filming in his garden of Giverny during the various hours

of the day, in the last decades of his life. They are light and color, the extreme synthesis. In contemporary painting, Georgia

O’Keeffe, pioneer of American modernism, with her pictorial macrophotographs, essential and sensual. Representative of the

pop-art, Andy Warhol with his Flowers of 1964, transforms the initial flower, in graphic image, decorative, with many variations

of color. Fascinated by the beauty of flowers, even contemporaries, Alex Katz and David Hockney, with their flat colors, intense

and their essentiality, continue to capture them.

“I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.”(Vincent van Gogh)


Héctor Lopéz

In the garden II

Hilde Carling

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life,

the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” (Hermann Hesse)

Hilde Carling is a Norwegian photographer author of several projects. A recurring element in her works is

water. The settings of her photographs often see her subjects interacting with or surrounded by this element.

Identifiable with all that is liquid and flowing, according to the Greek philosophers, water is one of the arches

of the cosmos and, for Thales, is the primordial principle that determines life. Over the centuries it has taken on

very different symbols. The flowing water symbolizes time, purification, life and death, eternal youth and much

more. In this Hilde’s photograph, there is a girl turned from behind who is looking at the horizon, in front of her

there is only an infinite expanse of water and a high wind that ruffles her hair. We don’t see her expression, but

we can feel the urge to breathe deeply. Black and white brings our attention to the details: the blonde hair, the

blouse buttoned down the back, the clear sky and the sea. There is movement but not confusion, enthusiasm and

not nervousness. This photograph conveys electricity and the will to live, a metaphor of pure youth at the mercy

of the wind, but eager to experience.


Hilde Carling

Departing

Ian Hughes

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.” (Bob Marley)

Ian Hughes is a street photographer born in 1969 in Heswall, England. He soon discovers his passion when

he starts working on cruises as a photographer. Infinite colored rolls available to document the most varied

circumstances, make cruises his laboratory. From an early age, Ian moved around the world, slipping through

the streets, touching every surface and every new culture that opens up before his eyes. His style is characterized

by strong colors and street scenes that portray everyday life in its most unusual aspects. For the past twenty

years, Ian has focused his investigation on the beaches of Brighton. He says “I moved there because I knew it

would be a great place to photograph people every day”. In this photograph “Brighton Beach and West Pier”,

we can see a more introspective and silent style of Ian. The colors are more toned thanks to the humidity of

the evening, it’s almost a black and white picture, completely distant from his classic approach. He captures

the beach in a moment of tranquility, in the last hours of the day. We see a dog playing with its owner, the tide

is going down and the wet sand seems like a mirror. This image tells us of a day that is slowly coming to an

end. Metaphor of everyday life, where each of us finally finds his own intimacy. A warning to remind us of an

important value: our freedom.


Ian Hughes

Brighton Beach and West Pier, England, 1998

Ibolya Cserfalvi

“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.” (Edward Hopper)

Ibolya Cserfalvi, is a Hungarian artist. She works with digital arts, graphics and animations. The uniqueness of her

images comes from the fact that she works with fractals during their creation. These are works of art, made with

digital devices, using computer algorithms. The intertwining of lines, traced by Pollock on the canvas, reflected

the fundamental characteristic of the fractal, observed Richard Taylor, the “autosomigliance”: in a fractal object,

each smaller part is similar, but not necessarily identical, to the larger forms of the same structure. This is one

of the fundamental characteristics of this new art, now part of digital art. The fascination of these forms is that

there is a total absence of intuition, as Mandelbrot states, the mathematician who was among the first to study

fractals. The latter are forms that have become effective models for investigations of all kinds, fundamental to

the study of chaos theory. And the artist also arrived at the fractals, not with the analysis of the mathematician,

but with intuition, demonstrating once again what a deep link exists between mathematics and art. Thanks to the

computer that allows you to easily create fractal objects of extraordinary beauty, have then multiplied in recent

years the experiences of fractal art.”My painting does not come from the easel. I almost never stretch the canvas

before painting. I prefer to nail it, not stretched, on the wall or on the floor. I move further and further away from

the painter’s usual tools - wrote Jackson Pollock - such as the easel, the palette, the brushes..”Ibolya Cserfalvi

a bit like Pollock moves away from pre-established artistic schemes synthesizing her concept of art in “Soul”.

A digital image printed on canvas, characterized by contemporary combinations and characterized by a strong

chromatic contrast. A modern and innovative work that leaves room for imagination and from which emerges

the soul of the artist, a deep soul, made of abysses and ascents.

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” (Francesco Bacone)


Ibolya Cserfalvi

Soul

Ingrid Gielen

“All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention.”

(Rudolf Arnheim)

Ingrid Gielen is an artist who lives in Sint-Truiden, Belgium. After being a social worker all her life, five years ago she

decided to take the step of attending the Academy of Visual Arts and photography finally became an integral part of

her existence and activity. Due to her work in a psychiatric hospital she was always in contact with people struggling

with their thoughts and emotions. With this project she tried to express these thoughts in pictures. Ingrid wanted to

make it recognizable for each of us, because we all have moments in life, in which we struggle with our thoughts.

The artist uses a diptych for each thought, one expresses the state of the mind for which she uses common objects,

the other expresses the state of the body, where the model takes different postures under a cloth. In this exposition she

only presents the bodies, they become a human sculpture. She used the same - unrecognizable- model in each picture,

so he became part of the object and experimented with different light settings but finally chose natural light because

of its soft effect. Ingrid’s work is a broad reading and rich visual documentation that testifies to this relationship we

have with our fruitful thoughts, turning them into matter through the use of the body and photography. She approaches

this form of expression with her experience by playing with movements and lights to guide us towards “a reform”.

She seeks a dialogue through these secret worlds with a philosophical aesthetic approach where the psychological and

anthropological aspect dominates. Psychology and the arts have this in common: that both the former and the latter

cover the entire sphere of the human mind. Here the artist examines the processes of the mind (emotional, intellectual

and motivational) to arouse a particular experience, underlining and examining its being a signifying form. In the mirror

of her photographs there is always another mirror. Becoming seems to quiet down when we give a name to a feeling,

when we identify it with something within ourselves. But if the identification becomes fluid, then the form does not

stop and becomes the kinetic energy of the feeling that in its maximum expression does not seek any answer, enjoys

its being desperately free.

Art Curator Erika Gravante

Ingrid Gielen

Thoughtmill

Ingrid Gielen

Pain

Ingrid Gielen

Fear

Ingrid Gielen

Drained

Ingrid Gielen

Introvert

Iori Inohara

“My bohemian spirit lives in the wildlife’s utopia.” (Iori Inohara)

Iori Inohara is a self-thought Japanese digital artist. Fascinated by nature since her childhood, during a solo trip

in Iceland, she discovered her true vocation inspired by the extraordinary performances of this wild land. The

sight of the soft orange sunset that melts over the drifting ice, glowing white and blue; the glance of a horse

passing through the forest; the morning light that slowly dies, made feel Iori the need to share with the world

this dreamlike perception of mother nature. Through her digital collages, Iori create a fictional macrocosm.

By juxtaposing breathtaking landscapes, child figures and wild animals, she gives birth to empirical images

that speak about freedom and inclusivity. All these elements, can be appreciated in the work presented for

this exhibition, titled “Undiscovered Lion-liness”. The little boys approaching a resting lion in a cavern –

reminiscence of Plato’s myth – suggest a sense of deep spiritual communion with mother nature. With the

decomposition and redial of subjects that may been deem as extreme opposites, Iori invites the viewer to look

at the surrounding with innocent eyes, free form any kind of preconceptions, in order to rediscover a sense

belongingness to the world. Her approach to art is joyful and spontaneous that seeks and believes in the utopia

of a greater union between creatures.

Art Curator Mery Malaventura

Iori Inohara

Undiscovered Lion-liness

Irene Kalents

“There is someone living inside of me. When I am receptive to beauty around me, we are both in

harmony.” (Irene Kalents)

The photographer Irene Kalents relies on her Armenian roots to get inspiration and connect the present and the

past, aspiring to a more serene and harmonious future. In constant search of expressing what she sees incisively,

the artist experiments and refines her technical skills. It is not relevant the subject, the material or the means

used, but what interests Irene the most is the chance to arouse different emotions through her works. Just as

in “Flower of Peace”, commonly known as the “lily of peace”, this dancing flower purifies the surrounding

environment and promotes peace and harmony. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the meaning of the lily

was associated with Hera / Juno, goddess of marriage and procreation, who while breast-feeding Hercules lost

two drops of milk: from one of these was generated this flower to which the meaning of love, loyalty and birth

was attributed. The lily emerges from the black background in all its royalty and purity, inviting the observer to

persevere and not to give up to his freedom and independence. Fundamental is the act of getting up in face of a

difficulty, trying to get increasingly more resilient and fighting for a united and better world. In fact, through this

photograph, the artist wishes to take the opportunity to increase the war awareness that is currently taking place

in Armenia. Hoping for the civilization protection and the purification from violence, the picture urges everyone

to stop the imminent crimes even with a small gesture, full of love and understanding, to help humanity to

continue its growth and improve the environment in which we all live.

“Being free does not only mean getting rid of one’s chains but living in a way that respects and

values the freedom of others.” (Nelson Mandela)


Irene Kalents

Flower of Peace

Ivan Luchin

“I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.”

(Diane Arbus)

Ivan Luchin is a collector of situations. His photographs have a spontaneous style and at the same time show

details that the naked eye would not see. Using the camera as a prosthetic eye, its perception of reality acquires

added value when it focuses the lens. The street photographer, Ivan Luchin, does not renounce immortalizing life

that flows: forgotten places, tireless workers, old lovers walking, or reflections of passers-by. With RIFLESSIoni,

he manages to create an alienating effect that certainly recalls much art of the Historical Avant-garde, from the

studies for mannequins by George Grosz to those painted by Giorgio De Chirico. Striking, in this sense, is the

resemblance to Pragerstrasse (1920) by Otto Dix, in which the painter recounted the contradictions of the world

after the Great War. Ivan Luchin took RIFLESSIoni in a particular historical moment for us contemporaries: life

after lockdown. So, the mannequins captured by the photographer, like fake and naked bodies, stripped of their

function, seem to arouse the path of a man returning to work. If the contrast of the colors – between the mustard

yellow of the mannequins and the light colors of the shirt of the man reflected in the window – it was not enough

to give an alienating effect to the image, it adds another element, at the top right: a bust of man, in classic style,

without arms, arrived from who knows where. A mystery, then, in which the observer is immersed, forced to

stay inside and outside the image, and to decide how to interpret what he sees.

Art Curator Giulia Calì

Ivan Luchin

RIFLESSIoni

Jane Gottlieb

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way - things I had

no words for.” (Georgia O’Keeffe)

The idyllic world of Jane Gottlieb is characterized by the predominant presence of unrealistic colors and shapes of

several objects which are often depicted in the foreground of the artworks. Some of the artist’s favorite scenarios

are the big cities. Thanks to the chromatic energy that is radiated by the work, the artist manages to transform

monuments, museums, buildings and other urban elements in a surreal vision that transports the viewer into a

parallel dimension where everything becomes brighter and more showy. In fact, this is precisely the strength of

Jane Gottlieb’s art, succeeding in overturning what is perceptible to the human eye, upsetting the ordinary and

promoting a new unique way of perceiving reality. The purple of the buildings, as in the works NYC Dusk and

Pompidou view, for example, contrasts with the yellow of the sky, as if the colors of the sunset had turned upside

down. The green of the plants, conversely, in the work Curtain call, blends with the blue but is immediately

contrasted by pink. The artist, through her technique teach the viewer that, with imagination, anything can

be perceived in a different way. Not only does everything appear brighter, but the careful study of chromatic

contrast highlights every form present in the work. The world of Jane Gottlieb therefore is characterized by

ordinary scenarios that patiently wait for our senses to grow sharper in order to become magical and fascinating.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” (Wayne W. Dyer)

Art Curator Lorenza Traina

Jane Gottlieb

NYC Dusk

Jane Gottlieb

Rome Cafe

Jane Gottlieb

Pompidou View

Jane Gottlieb

Curtain Call

Jane Gottlieb

Paris Buddha

Johann Neumayer

Johann Neumayer is an Austrian artist who realizes his works through the sofware Rhino 5. Neumayer’s works

are the result of a collaboration between the artist, the designer, the software and the printer that become part of

a single system, indispensable for the realization of the work. Digitally made, its three-dimensional models lend

themselves to be 3D printed and become real sculptures. On the other hand his creations seem surrealist paintings

in which to get lost with imagination. His greatest series is called “The space and dream imaging machine” in

which the human figure is central. In “dressme” exhibition, Neumayer presented three of his creations focused

on the figure of the woman, in this new exhibition presents five works with the same subject. The image number

1 is an evolution of the previous work called “BLACK”. The two women, from black become dressed in a

shining gold. It’s interesting to analyze the human figure in picture number 2, in which some figures are larger

than others: small human figures seem almost to be crushed by huge boots. This work can become a parallelism

with life. There will always be someone to crush you, but you must always be ready to react. Another interesting

work is the image number 5, in which the artist uses the human figure as a module, repeating the image of a

woman many times and in different positions. This creates “human” lines that compose geometric figures. The

art of Johann Neumayer is a surrealist art, through which the artist gives vent to his imagination and creativity

through digital. His creativity allows him to create works free of any pattern, without following imposed rules.


Johann Neumayer

The space and dream imaging machine - 1

Johann Neumayer


Johann Neumayer


Johann Neumayer


Johann Neumayer


Kampski

Kampski is a Dutch artist who uses the means of photography to tell stories full of fantasy, overwhelming the viewer both

perceptively and sensorially. Through his photographs Kampski give rise to his impetuous emotions, conditioned by the

urban environment or the beauty of nature, wrapping everything in an intimate, mystical and dreamy atmosphere. In

“Desire”, a girl stands out from an abandoned church with her candid white dress, underlining the purity, the simplicity

of the pose and a gloomy symbolism. Lying on the ground there is another dress, struck by a subtle beam of light, in

sharp contrast with a background that brings a sense of restlessness. An important detail concerns the model’s blindfold,

suggesting uncertainty and fear for the future: in this way a relationship originates between visible and invisible that

refers to the narrow boundary between dreamlike appearance and reality. The space is constructed in way as to best

distinguish each element present in the work, but these separate parts move and change, shifting the observer’s attention

and the sense of the general organization of the image. In “Destination Unknown” a change is represented within the

personal path of each individual. The open door reflects an unknown and unimaginable world, still to be discovered.

The woman is getting up and she is about to leave: this gesture is full of spontaneity, purity and authenticity. The desire

to go “elsewhere”, to look for unknown and uncontaminated places, often comes from a dissatisfaction with one’s own

current situation, perceived with no way out. Even if you encounter many obstacles in the course of your life, you need

to have the determination to overcome them, to enter into a new path and start your own rebirth. Finally, in “See The

Truth” the model is blindfolded again with darkened glasses. The message is placed clearly in front of the observer:

sometimes it is not necessary to see in order to get the truth. The comparison between image and language is strong

and the artist hides one of the main senses which enable us to express and to see reality. In this atmosphere of waiting

and mystery the sight does not allow to ascertain an evident truth, which remains still pending to be uncovered. For this

reason, the observer is invited to immerse himself in the photography, and to see beyond his own sight for unveiling

this truth.


Kampski

Desire

Kampski

Destination Unknown

Kampski

See The Truth

Katrin Loy

“What exactly corresponds to reality and what to imagination? What is reality and what is

imagination? It is all a matter of consciousness, a paradox. Life is only a dream of a higher

awakening.” (Katrin Loy)

The artist Katrin Loy, through the use of the photographic instrument, undertakes a journey into the soul of the

human beings, focusing their introspection, cognition and intuitive acts. This emerges in the photograph “Echo

and Narcissus”, where the comparison with one’s soul and the opposite sex is crucial. According to the myth,

which derives from the “Metamorphoses” of the Roman poet Ovid, the nymph Echo consumes herself with

love for Narcissus, who rejects her; subsequently Narcissus will be punished by the Gods and will be drowned

to death, in an attempt to capture his own image with which he had fallen madly in love. The self-portrait, the

gestures and the sense of spirituality/mysticism are found in this Narcissus as now as it was then, marking the

history of the Western culture, from psychoanalysis to the artistic imaginary. Through the superimposition

and digital alienation of images, Katrin Loy emphasizes a new imaginary that differs from mere reality, by

creating a continuous link between present and past. Exactly as the Caravaggio’s famous work entitled “The

Narcissus”, Katrin divides the space vertically, creating two perfect mirror sections. Moreover, here the female

image of Echo is present, even if it appears to be semi hidden by the dominant figure of Narcissus. On the

top right the artist adds a curious detail, a little bird, which represents the freedom of the soul and reflects the

Echo’s matter of love. In the age of the selfie, where it is difficult to distinguish collective identity from the

individual one, photographic art restores solemnity to the individual. By posing herself very profound questions

about imagination, reality and the process of identity definition, the artist investigates the close bond created

between the conscious and the subconscious, which allows the viewer to immerse himself in the photographic

construction and, as if he was a mirror, to reflect his own inner myth on it.


Katrin Loy

Echo and Narcissus

Keiko Hosoya

“Time expands, then contracts, and in tune with the stirrings of the heart.” (Haruki Murakami)

Keiko Hosoya is a Japanese conceptual artist, born and raised in Tokyo. Keiko’s work sweeps between different

medias combining analogic, digital and musical techniques. She juxtaposes natural elements – such as water or

light – and handmade compositions with industrial materials and digital processes, interweaving a thread that

connects different stages of human’s history and evolution. Starting from a Buddhist perspective - which she has

practiced from childhood through her family influence – Keiko blurs the line between what is organic and what

is industrially made by creating a connection between past, present and future. Her philosophy is masterfully

represented in the piece she chooses for this exhibition. This artwork is a video-based collage in which she

reflects over the concept of time. Through a composition made by selected video shoots of a knitted thread,

Keiko overlaps different timelines producing an atemporal image, in which the slowness of a human gesture

is both opposed and integrated into the speed of digital technologies. The fusion of these two macro-themes

creates an inclusive vision of the human presence in the world, which transcend a defined notion of time and it

elevates into a spiritualistic approach toward medias and materials.


Keiko Hosoya

Untitled

Lika Ramati

“The renunciation of the human figure is the most difficult of all things for photography.”

(Walter Benjamin)

No genre developed as much as the portrait in photography. It was an extraordinary success. Despite all the innovations

that have developed, photography has continued to be associated with the representation of people. Photographic

portraits are now a central and well-incorporated aspect of contemporary visual culture. The photographic portrait is

still today a very intense artistic communication tool. An example of extraordinary artistic value are the photographic

portraits presented for this event by the artist Lika Ramati, who shows us five portraits of five completely different

women. The beauty of the black and white portrait is timeless, as can be seen in the shots entitled “Casablanka Lily”

and “Train Station”. In the first shot, we are able to relive the timeless beauty of the stars of Hollywood films, as the

title of the work refers to an iconic film from the 1940s. Their simple and delicate beauty, but at the same time full

of sensuality, showed through their every glance and movement in the film. So here the model exudes that delicate

sensuality by making a small and simple gesture. In the second shot it is the everyday simplicity that shines through.

The title of the work itself recalls a typical waiting place, the train station, where it often happens to casually meet the

gaze of an unknown person who steals us. In fact, in this shot the absolute protagonist is the dazzling and magnetic look

of the girl, who observes us intensely. The direct gaze to the viewer is also found in the work entitled “China Town”,

in which this literally shimmering gaze captures all attention. The photographic cut chosen and the choice to focus on

the girl’s face contribute to the creation of a shot of absolute intensity. Instead, in the “Green Green Grass” shot we find

the idea of a slightly retro shot in the choice of photographic technique, but also in the look of the model. It seems to

really take a step into the past. It seems to immerse us in another era also with the shot entitled “Mary b.”. In which a

femme fatale seduces the viewer with her pose and her dazzling gaze, becoming a symbol of sin, and representing a sort

of challenge towards the sacred image behind her in which sinners are punished.

Art Curator Silvia Grassi

Lika Ramati

Mary B

Lika Ramati

Train Station

Lika Ramati

China Town

Lika Ramati

Casablanka Lily

Lika Ramati

Green Green Grass

Lina Khei

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is

the important thing.” (Georgia O’Keeffe)

Lina Khei is a self-taught French artist with an innate sense for art discovered at an early age. For many years she has

worked as a professional makeup artist and is now developing a strong interest in art and beauty. The woman in all her

splendor is a true inspiration for this artist, through whose works emerges power, femininity and sensuality. Women,

great protagonists of literature, cinema and music, have always had a leading role in the world of art, both as muses

and as creators. What makes an iconic woman in art more than anything else is undoubtedly her beauty and sensuality;

we think of the power of Botticelli’s Venus. Women, with their being mothers, daughters, wives, lovers, friends are the

engine of the world, and they owe their fame and their success to that aura of femininity that distinguishes them. After

all, all the great artists have painted in honor of a woman, inspired by her beauty or moved by love for her. The art of

the twentieth century has been marked by many masterpieces dedicated to the female figure, one of them is undoubtedly

Gala, muse of Salvador Dalì, protagonist of a passionate and total love that has influenced the art and psyche of the

Spanish artist. Women who create, women who inspire as in the case of Lina, whose work “Oro” embodies the perfect

harmony between the voluptuous curves and the mysterious shadows of the face. An ideal symbiosis of passions

that reincarnates, drawing inspiration from all the splendor and complexity of the female universe, as a result of a

real effervescence of pleasure and power. Her woman, covered in gold, with a firm complexion and a fleshy mouth,

does not look at the spectator but I invite him to get lost in her look and voluminous eyelashes. Perfectionist in the

heart, transmits and brings out through her works the emotion, energy and mystery that emanate from the beauty of

human features, emphasizing them with the use of the most noble of colors, gold. The only color that no one is able to

reproduce, and for this reason has always been a symbol of the unreal, of the distant, of the divine just like this woman.

Beautiful and unattainable.

“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)


Lina Khei

Oro

Liz Casey

We can start from this photograph’s title to try to understand it. “To The One I love”, it states, and the same

love is incarnated in the spikes at the front. Looking at it, with a bit of imagination and personification, we can

begin to see not two ears anymore, but almost two people. We watch and the grass begins to have feelings, to

love and to care. In the curve of the taller spike there is indeed a parent’s tenderness when they bend to kiss their

child on the forehead or, tending their arms, to hug the kid and hold them close. The parent smiles, patient and

caring, and the child listens with giant, innocent eyes. It is saying, “I am here, I love you, I will protect you”.

Despite the spikes being at two different levels, there is nothing in the picture that suggests an imbalance in

power. The taller spike does not dominate, does not impose, but on the contrary, it bends as much as possible to

be at the lower spike’s level. If spikes could talk, we could be maybe hearing the little one calling the taller for

attention, to share a story it has to tell. It is a newborn bird in the nest when mama bird comes back. Surely, the

photographer leaves us the chance to give the picture our own interpretation, always in the realm of love; love

in all its infinitive form. Whether between parent and children, sibling, lovers or friends, what matter it is how

this picture transmits comfort and solidarity. The picture focuses on two specific stalks and the general scenery

is only an anonymous field. Still the same love and tenderness surpasses the borders of the field and of the

photo itself, for grass can also be nourishment, food and community. It is life and creation. Indeed, in the space

between the spikes there are glimpses of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam”, the stalks God and Adam’s

index fingers stretching to each other without touching for eternity. The Omnipotent Father and the first Son.

Art Curator Guendalina Cilli

Liz Casey

To The One I Love

Maki Amemori

“Creativity takes courage.” (Henri Matisse)

Maki Amemori is a professional photographer, visual director and artist based in Tokyo, Japan. She began her

career as an independent photographer in 2014. She mainly makes portraits and her strong point is to produce

images that make people more attractive to make them understand how unique and beautiful they are. Her artistic

research is based on the reinterpretation of the past, present and future. “Bottomless” is a digital photography that

marks, in a decisive way, the passage of two times and that embodies all the contemporary art that is the basis of

Maki’s research. In the imaginary of the artistic disciplines a current is composed, in its turn, of a great variety

of currents. This has been the case since the 1960s.In 1975 a Kodak researcher, Steven Sasson, began working

on a revolutionary invention: the first digital camera, which had the ambition to overcome the film, creating a

new camera that could digitize the images just taken. In its malleable numerical incorporeality, however, the

digital image bends infinitely more easily to manipulation and fantastic invention. As Joan Fontcuberta states,

photography has always been a «kiss of Judas» that betrays reality at the very moment in which it seems to

declare her love. The canvas for Maki is a place of emotions and feelings, pain and joy, pleasure and discomfort,

life and death. It expresses the deep, infinite places that every human being encounters unexpectedly in her

own life; chasms of which we do not see the bottom, inaccessible mysteries, a place to which we are prevented

access.Her work of art consists in combining three artistic concepts that for centuries challenge artists and their

interpretations. It is an experimental world made of colors and innovations that gives joy to those who observe

and create it. It is a world “mixed with old and new”, “Chaos of the Times” and “Parallel World”.

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

(Andy Warhol)


Maki Amemori

Bottomless

Marc’S

“Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that

goes along with your self-esteem.” (Kurt Cobain)

Marc’S is a French photographer born in 1974 in La Rochelle. Free and uncontaminated, she grows up in art

and photography as a self-taught person, forming herself day by day, absorbing every possible stimulus. Curious

and attentive to everything surrounds her, Marc’s is a dynamic artist who is constantly looking for novelties to

create something new. Her greatest source of inspiration is her own imagination and, thanks to the staging, she

materializes all her ideas. Her style is characterized by an alteration of colors that become almost fluorescent,

sometimes pink and sometimes blue, catapulting us into a dystopian and surreal world, but which has a lot to

tell about the real one. Often, in fact, it also draws inspiration from everyday consumer society. How we are

absorbed by progress and how this has led, and is leading, a radical change in our interacting with ourselves and

with the world around us. The series presented here at M.A.D.S., is called “Screen Addiction” and is part of the

“Junkie Society” project. Through this work, she investigates the addiction to television and screens, which has

been instilled in man over the years. There is a boy who is completely alone by the sea. Everything seems like

a distant dream. The only company is an old television which, although is no longer functional, he continues

to stare. An empty screen, a box that does not breathe, that does not walk and does not even speak anymore,

has now become an extension of the boy’s body. The only way to survive. These photographs tell us about a

serious problem that is afflicting our society, especially through the use of smartphones, which are increasingly

necessary and increasingly difficult to remove. A machine that cannot function without us, but without which

we are suddenly unable to function.


Marc’S

Junkie Society «Screen Addiction» 01

Marc’S


Marc’S


Marc’S


Marc’S


Margarita Kalcheva

A girl stands in the middle of a forest, in wait. She’s facing the woods, supposedly wondering what possible

road to take next. Indeed, the forest offers infinite possibilities but for one right path, ten could lead to further

loss. The woods can be a mysterious and dangerous place and Miss Kalcheva tells us. She does it by distorting

the photograph and the space with it. As by the title of the photograph, this girl is in a labyrinth - this is the

fundamental key - a labyrinth of trees, trunks and branches. Not only the woods are a labyrinth by nature, but

they magnify this by swirling on themselves till they become something unreal and nightmarish. It is a forest

from the darkest fairy-tales, the stories parents used to tell children to warn them from the dangers of the

world. It’s curious that the woman is wearing a red shirt, almost a modern Little Red Riding Hood crossing the

metaphorical forest of life. It is a creepy Wonderland; woods where a smiling Chesire Cat might pop out and

float above a branch at any moment. This is not our reality, it is a distortion of time and space. Here, normal

coordinates lose meaning. We can guess the arrow of a compass would simply turn and turn forever unable to

find the North. Without the help from instruments, we, together with the girl, are left to our instincts to find a

way out. She is her only coordinate, the solid centre of chaos. All the other reference points are not to be trusted.

The trees curve and melt and the down becomes the above. Here you cannot see the sky, only the terrain and the

girl herself stretch to an absurd degree. It could as well be the girl is inside a bubble, a glass sphere like the ones

with snow used as ornaments, forever trapped inside in a single instant as we watch from the outside.

Art Curator Guendalina Cilli

Margarita Kalcheva

Labyrinth

Mari Halttunen

“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”

(Kurt Vonnegut)

Mari Halttunen is a Finnish photographer. As an artist, through photography, she wants to capture moments that are

only visible for a short period. The sadness in a person’s eyes, the mischievous smile on a child’s face. Many are

her half-length portraits, which intend to focus the viewer’s gaze on the psychological introspection of her subjects.

The photographic portrait is a genre, in fact, born from the idea of showing physical and moral qualities. The first

psychological portrait photos presented by the academic photography were those of David Octavius Hill, name followed

by many others such as Nadar, Disdéri, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Gustave Le Gray. Later, the genre

evolved in parallel with the evolution of the history of photography, which is why, together with photographers who

devote themselves exclusively to a more orthodox photographic portrait, we find photographers assigned to specific

movements that approach the photographic portrait with the use of ideas and techniques all different. The portrait is

intended to narrate the most intimate expression of the subject. Her color, dark and dim, has the ability to focus the

attention of the observer on the most emotionally charged traits of a face or a person. The inclination of the face, the

attitude of the subject, the position of the hands and body, transmit more than you can see: an attitude, an emotion, a

desire. Light, another key element, to read the narration of a photo, can take on different interpretative tones. Mari, not

surprisingly, chooses a dramatic tone, characterized by strong light with high contrast and areas of darkness opposed

to areas of light, a soft light that highlights the somatic features of the face. Even the cutting light can give dramatic

connotations to the portrait. Together with the function of light, the gestures of the subject photographed, emphasizes

particular emotional connotations. With her photos, Mari intends to give the public the opportunity to create their own

story providing all the features and details necessary for its construction. What is the girl thinking in the picture? What

does she feel and why? Why is the look in her eyes what it is? You make history.

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” (Vincent Van Gogh)


Mari Halttunen

Untitled

MarioVaccaj <<mr WAVE>>

Mario Vaccaj <<mr WAVE>> is an Italian artist and DJ based in Sardinia. His style conjugates his passion for

painting and photography with his studies as a researcher in gravitational waves. “I like expressing through art

how the individual is simply a microscopic particle travelling in the universe”. “Butterfly Wave” is the result of

a synergy between art and science, between natural and artificial. The artwork represents primarily a butterfly

that comes from a picture taken outdoors. The artist then manipulated the picture giving it a new identity: a

process of digitization able to highlight all the saturated and contrasted elements of the picture. The chromatic

choice of the artistic is made of a blue palette of the grass opposed to a light yellow of the butterfly’s body. The

digital manipulation allows the viewers to focus the attention and to viscerally contemplate the “soul” of the

butterfly and its surrounding, with an almost anatomic fruition of it. “Butterfly Wave” shows how every particle

is essential and that can be an object of artistic representation. The artist, thanks to his passion for physics and

ultrasound, is able to aesthetically transpose on his virtual canvas the movement and the beauty of the natural

particles and elements. Physics becomes therefore the means that nature uses to express and offer an artistic

experience.


MarioVaccaj <<mr WAVE>>

Butterfly Wave

Meley Laetitia SIE

Meley Laetitia SIE is an Ivorian Fashion and Fine Art photographer based in San Diego, California. Her photographic work is the result

- and work in progress - of her passion for fashion and aesthetic composition, and of a more political mission: raising awareness on the

importance of roots, on the value of viscerally connecting with our own cultural and historical heritage, as a means to strengthen our own

subjectivity. “In 2020, she found her true identity during her travel back to her home country Cote D’Ivoire, West Africa. This trip helped

her redefine herself as an artist. She reunited with her African heritage, and she created the true essence of her art: promoting African

culture, black beauty, black excellence, and Christian faith. She creates images showcasing different aesthetics of blackness using natural

scenes, color, warm and neutral tones”. Meley’s pictures represent an homage to her homeland and to the precious and empowering bond

she has with it. Her way of composing and staging pictures, mirrors her artistic urgency to investigate her own origins, as a powerful

means that gives authenticity to her authorial work as fashion photographer and storyteller. “Connect with your heritage for a brighter

future” portraits two women with a suitcase staging a movement that evokes their intention to discover and explore. “I wanted to stress

that we can reconnect to our roots through travels, research, documentaries, etc. By reconnecting and learning about its African heritage/

culture, the young African is empowered and breaks down misconceptions that he had about his culture” writes Meley. “Silver water”

represents an elegant composition of a black woman dressed up with a silver dress, while being immersed in water. The interesting element

is precisely the setting: the woman posing and dressing like a model melted with a natural landscape, instead of a catwalk. “The silver

color, water texture, and the color of water create a beautiful and peaceful harmony. I wanted to show tranquillity, harmony and peace.

Where there is peace and harmony, there is justice. I believe that as black people, we will experience true justice when equity will be put in

place. We want justice, we want to breathe peacefully” states the photographer. The sense of well-being and beauty the spectator perceives

from the picture recalls Meley’s message to establish in society the same sense of equilibrium and balance between the individual and

his surroundings. “Unexpected” talks about that “magic trick” photography often brings with it. If the impulse to visually communicate

something and to leave an impact on the collective consciousness pushes the artist to create and act, what comes as a result is however

surprisingly unpredictable. The telescope the girl is using may symbolise the excitement and curiosity to see the artistic outcome taking

shape. The synergy between Meley’s acuity in composing captivating pictures and her political attitude is able to make her photographic

poetics an autobiographical work, faithful mirror of her personal and cultural heritage, while reaching effectively a large audience.


Meley Laetitia SIE

Connect with your heritage for a brighter future

Meley Laetitia SIE

Silver Water

Meley Laetitia SIE

Unexpected

NAE

“Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” (Theodore Dreiser)

Nae, born, lives and works in Salzburg, Austria. As a traveler of analogue digital synthesis, the self-taught visual

artist never stops exploring. Aristotle pointed to a strong distinction between objects created by nature and those

that are realized by human action, because the latter are the result of an intellectual elaboration by man, which is

not the case with the former. This mental elaboration is defined by the philosopher precisely as a technique. The

term technique, is derived from the Greek “tèchne”, that is art in the sense of know-how, which in the modern

and contemporary era has led a large number of artists to give up more and more technical perfectionism in

favor of a more subjective artistic language. Nae, in his works synthesizes digital photography and painting

in combination with subtle shades of color, strokes and gestural signs. In his works, which are first created

pictorially and then processed digitally, Nae creates a transformed atmosphere that should allow the viewer

to feel, perceive and discover a new reality. His paintings represent opposites, polarize and therefore are rich

in contrast. His style is extremely realistic, in which the work is deeply expressive, and based on the technical

ability of the artist to reproduce, as faithfully as possible, an increasingly innovative art. Since its appearance,

photography has been labeled as inferior to painting, as a technical tool not worthy of expressing a subjective

artistic sensation. Around 1925 the lessons of the Bauhaus clarified how all forms of expression existed in order

to collaborate, constituting a shared symbolic language, on which is based the understanding of the message

transmitted by the artist. The “Blck series” is a clear example of what has been said so far, through which the

artist looks back, showing the strong impact caused by social changes. The world of art, but also the same that

surrounds us has changed, is different, is difficult to perceive. To express such a vision, the artist uses the black

color, which well contrasts with the bright colors that we possess within us, joyful of life.

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)


NAE

Blck Suzanna

NAE

Blck Kelly [RMX Two]

NAE

Blck Mamba

Naomi Scala aka eN.aart

“A picture is worth a thousand words but the memories are priceless.” (Rebecca McNutt)

eN, was born as Naomi Scala, and she’s a photographer of Italo-American origins, although she calls herself a

gipsy for her DNA composed of migrants, travelers and artists, whose footsteps will follow soon. She decides

not to use her real name, like every photographer, she wants to be invisible during her shoots, showing the

modern society that she witnesses constantly. This is a series that contains its origins starting from Sicily and

her childhood. Small details that include and enclose her whole world and have made her the person and artist

of today. Particularly important are the moments of “solfeggi” with the mother that lead her to live in her

universe always in a very imaginative and colorful way. Each of us is tied to our childhood memories because

they represent a “treasure” of priceless value. Memories of eN are like the waves of the sea, they come and go;

capricious and sometimes malevolent, they bring us closer to a moment of the past: a voice, a perfume, a sound,

a moment marked by sadness or happiness. We are all made of memories that determine and constitute us, they

are our roots and define what we are: beings who experience, grow, mature and learn. With these photographic

collages the artist exposes these two concepts, memory and emotion, where they are so united that the simple

fact of feeling happy, scared or afflicted almost always leads to the emergence of a memory of the past: it is an

affective reaction that demonstrates how much weight the memories have about our personality and our world

and in this case about our creative process. All the events with positive energy that we have experienced in

certain moments of our existence have the power to recharge us with a good spirit in the present. The mystery

behind all this, is that positive memories can be used to enhance our resources in the present time and through

these artworks we can see this force that feels like a warm hug.

Art Curator Erika Gravante


Welcome to Sicily


Un tuffo al cuore! (A dip in the heart!)


In a world where personality is everything...


The End of the World


L’INFERNO. D.Alighieri


Artist’s life


To My Mother

Paolo Rossi

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside,

dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” (Carl Gustav Jung)

Paolo Rossi is an Italian photographer. He approaches photography in 2008 and since then he has been the

author of several projects, most of which are oriented towards an inner investigation, both of himself and of the

human being more generally. The camera becomes for him a tool to illuminate those spaces within each of us,

which often hide and remain unexpressed. In the “Not aware” project presented here, his goal is to give voice

to the unconscious and literally shed light on it. Starting from the studies on the color perception on how colors

communicate with the unconscious, Paolo started this project in 2019. According to this theory “[…] Color is the

visual processing generated by the nerve signals that photoreceptors of the retina send to the brain. Perception

is therefore created by our brain and is capable of provoking different emotional responses and psychological

attitudes.”

Paolo Rossi

Therefore, each of us would have a “personal color palette”. By involving other people, Paolo takes on a central

role and helps the other in self-discovery, through the use of color and photography. A part of us expresses itself

by painting our faces and Paolo documents it. Fluorescent shades twirl in the dark, imprinting themselves on the

camera sensors. The only light comes from the colors that each subject has decided to use on the face, digging

inside himself and letting that usually darkened part emerge. Trajectories dictated by instinct, therefore, give life

to real portraits of the unconscious.


Paolo Rossi

Asphyxiation

Paolo Rossi

Be the change

Paolo Rossi

Lost boy

Paolo Rossi

Radiant

Paolo Rossi

Speak a little louder

Paolo Rossi

Tell me I’m safe

Patti Roberts

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.”

(Judy Garland)

Patti Sanford Roberts is an American photographer. She has always cultivated an interest in photography,

focusing her research on the female figure within the domestic environment. His works “The Iron Lady”, “The

After Prom”, “In the garden”, “Electrolux” and “?” are part of “Soundings from the Homefront” series, where

her vision of Catholic education received in childhood emerges. The duty of women in managing the home

environment is shown here by Patti, with an ironic note. Through self-portraits, she tells us about a female figure

apparently distracted in carrying out her daily tasks, but who actually hides a mischievous streak and great

fortitude. The settings are perfectly organized, the spaces clean and tidy, the gardens perfectly manicured, all

without a slightest detail out of place. The choice of colors is not casual, in fact, it manages to transmit energy,

strength and dynamism. It tells us about a woman who fights with the home environment every day in order to

create the perfect and ideal place, but at the same time enjoys it by teasing the old ideals of the Catholic tradition.

Actually, the flowering trees, show the woman in her prime, still capable of taking what she wants in her dignity.

Patti, with these photos, addresses all those women who, in order to achieve their goals, have had and still fight

against old stereotypes that have not been demolished yet.


Patti Roberts

After Prom

Patti Roberts

Electrolux

Patti Roberts

Iron Lady

Patti Roberts

The Back Yard

Patti Roberts

The Front Yard

Paul-Yves Poumay

“Art doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.” (Duane Hanson)

Paul-Yves Poumay has a background in finance and marketing and extensive work experience in the banking

and insurance industry. His passion for art finds its roots in his childhood, his work kept him away from it for

several years, until one day this situation changed and, following his heart, he enrolled at the Art Academy of

Spa in Belgium. Provocative and ironic, hypersensitive yet incredibly optimistic, Poumay’s work has many

intentions, but it is mainly oriented towards others. Labeled as a utopian, he expresses his indignation at the

corrosive power of money. His photographic discourse thus intertwines with historical reconstruction, social

reflection and political analysis. The approach of his photography is shaped by the desire to focus culturally on

turning points and changes, contrasts. Paul, a photographer who managed to build a sensitive theme like that

of the homeless, understanding right from the start that talking about these people through such a powerful

medium as photography was a very complex process. In this photo what immediately comes to the eye of the

observer is the emphasis that the artist wanted to put on the contrast that today afflicts our society daily; a way

made of power and weakness, a world of those who have everything and who have nothing. The society of the

extremes, which proposes few intermediate means. A reality that strikes the eyes and the heart. He translates his

questions into an eccentric expressionism, going from the most colorful to the darkest. She is self-taught and

instinctive and, through the use of art and absurdity, challenges the world to give voice to all those forgotten

people. Many photographers who through the photography of reportage have brought to light themes still in the

shadows: Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, journalists photographers, who used the images to bring to light stories of

poverty in America at the beginning of 900, to the great interpreters of contemporary society, such as Sebastião

Salgado or Henri Cartier-Bresson.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” (Henry David Thoreau)


Paul-Yves Poumay

Les belles manières

Penja Hesselbäck

The shots of the Swedish photographer Penja Hesselbäck have a strong dramatic charge, perceptible at first

glance. Through his photographs a sense of desolation and anxiety emerges, dictated by the artistic choice to

capture desolate landscapes shrouded in mist and to prefer black and white shots. Another favorite subject of

Hesselbäck are the forests: in particular she focuses her attention on the verticality of the trunks of the trees that

come close to each other, creating a dense network of vertical lines. The feeling of bewilderment and anguish

is inevitable. In particular, it is interesting the photo entitled “First Circle of Hell” which portrays a pond from

which a thick fog is released. It envelops the whole composition. The horizon line, from the hill behind the pond,

cuts the composition horizontally in half. This suggests the division between the real world and the otherworldly

world. This parallelism is even more accentuated by the trees and reeds that are reflected in the waters of the

tand. The title conditions the spectator who is mentally catapulted into the first infernal circle: that of the violent,

described by Dante as a river of boiling blood in which they are immersed violent against the other people.


Penja Hesselbäck

First Circle of Hell

Peter Konečný

Where can we place the boundary between dream and reality, between conscious and unconscious? On that thin

line that separates us from the dream world, Peter’s works are placed. The photographer transports the viewer

into a dimension made of magic and energy, he shows us something intangible and unattainable, the bodies

can be glimpsed, the living presence is perceived but we are not allowed to reach them. The human figure has

always had an important meaning for artists of all ages, the representation of it assumes a notable role for man

for the interpretation and knowledge of himself. Perfect and idealized bodies are those that the classical age has

elaborated, reproductions, sometimes of vices and virtues, or models to imitate. But the ideal of perfection in

the course of history has changed and distorted, the human body often becomes a symbol of discomfort, like

the figures represented by Schiele. What Peter does is something aesthetically wonderful, which goes beyond

the very limits of the human body, the figures he shows the observer do not want to exhibit beauty or ugliness,

perfection or defect. Before us appear, more or less clearly, bodies that tell a story, gestures that move in space

and have a meaning, captured in a snapshot, made eternal and immobilized. There is a great harmony in Peter’s

artistic work, a strong balance that releases positive energy. He, through lights and shadows, black and white,

writes stories, traces stories and it will be up to the viewer to listen to them through his personal interpretation.

Peter’s photographs, both for the subject and for the shooting mode, and again for the composition, bring to

mind the photographic series Amnios by Eric Ceccarini. Clearly there is similarity in the works, which are

of great impact and strong evocative power. Defenitely, Peter’s work gives the observer a moment of sensual

harmony, magic and delicacy.

“If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” (Walt Whitman)


Peter Konečný

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Peter Konečný

Reflection

Peter Konečný

I live upstairs from You

Ricard Berenguer

“We humans, are capable of greatness.” (Carl Sagan)

Ricard Berenguer is a Spanish photographer and designer. He started approaching photography inspired by the

work of Henri Cartier Bresson. Indeed, Ricard’s images highly focus on urban photography: he explores the

every-day life of people looking for the “decisive instant” that discloses the rawness of human nature. Ricard

uses his camera as a narrative instrument, hence, “The Betrayal” is the visual representation of a part of the plot

of a series of pieces focused on the rawness of humanity. The woman, captured while smoking a cigarette and

starring at the camera, is speaking about her personal betrayal: the betrayal of a world in which she believed

in and turned its back on her. This portrait is an act of courage of the subject, who is not scared to show her

desolation using it has a powerful weapon of rebellion. Her strained mascara, her misty-eyes, and her severe

glance are sublimed in a stance against silence and indifference. With this shoot, Ricard desecrates the disregard

of society towards individuality by showing the misery of the human condition as a state that is deeply ingrained

in our being, which is, however, capable of make fell us closer to the others and part of a spiritual collectivity.


Ricard Berenguer

The Betrayal

Rima Virbauskaite

“The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom

they have a persistent intuition.” (Honore de Blazac)

Rima Virbauskaite is a contemporary Lithuanian photographer. Starting with and old Zenit camera, she then

approached medium format pinhole camera and black&white film developing, followed with 4x5” format and

later 8x10” format. At the moment, she mostly works with large format pinhole camera, using film and direct

positive paper. At the same time, Rima operates with environment friendly developer caffenol C - composed

by coffee, soda and vitamin C - and alternative print processes such as oil print, lumen print, cyanotype, liquid

emulsion, solarization, solargraphy and black and white images coloring with natural dyes. Her interest in

nature is reflected in the series titled “Plants therapy”. Three pieces from this series presented in the M.A.D.S

Milano photo awards exhibition. Each image is realized with large format 8x10” pinhole camera on black&white

negative, which is processed with caffenol C. The sheets are solarized during the development process, obtaining

a mystical and intimate vision of the world. Indeed, Rima captures the subconscious human need of a close

contact with nature. Plants can be considered the symbol of the collective memory of the world, being appeared

on our planet 470 million years ago. By observing and interacting with them, we can regain our ancestral

contact with mother earth, often denigrated in the rushing modern times. Through her work, Rima suggest to

the viewer to rediscover the sense of belonging to the universe, as a fragment of a more complex being. The

techniques used, incentive this invitation with the creation of a dream-like pictures, which transcend the simple

representation of the world into a spiritual, almost religious, approach to nature.


Rima Virbauskaite

Achillea

Rima Virbauskaite

Nymphaea

Rima Virbauskaite

Zantedeschia

Robert Harper

“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible,

and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. If it were only the other

way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that... for that... I would give everything! Yes,

there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”. (The picture of Dorian Gray, O. Wilde)

Robert Harper is a London-based photographer who works for the most important fashion brands. In his

photographs we also meet well-known personalities from the world of entertainment. His research is mainly

focused on portraiture, an approach he uses as personal research, as well as work. In fact, here we look at one

of his projects, which presents a portrait style that breaks with the classical character. The young girl’s face is

not centered, but lateral, as if she were sitting leaning against the right edge of the image. Leaving the back

wall uncovered, it seems to have someone beside her, a person we cannot see. That empty space communicates

unease. It calls our attention first, and it is almost completely master of the image, occupying a large part of the

visual field. Everything is wrapped in a black and white rich in contrasts. The girl’s face hints at a grin and the

black sweater, whose folds we can’t distinguish, unravels in a single shape up to her neck. An almost evil beauty

hides behind her face. The back wall accompanies our mind in the past, in those Renaissance paintings, where

the neutral background served to give importance to the subject in the foreground. At the same time, however,

it is superb, and wants to excel over the young girl. A timeless background, to which no age or time can be

attributed, fights with human beauty destined for transience, a beauty at the mercy of time, immortal only for

the photography.


Robert Harper

Genevieve

Rusty Orange

Urbex Photography, shortened form of Urban Exploration Photography, is a branch of architecture photography

that explores the urban habitat. Mystery, curiosity and passion for the forbidden characterize this genre, which

documents the decadent charm of the abandoned buildings and the re-appropriation of these places operated by

nature. In these sites, usually old factories or derelict residences, all sorts of oddities can be found, from antique

furniture to old machines, from stacked crockery to dusty books; each forgotten object contributes to give to

the photographic subject this dark and mysterious atmosphere. With his selection of artworks Rusty offers a

wide view on this genre, by submitting three photographs, taken in three different places, but united by the same

subject: the staircase. In S.A.C.C.I. the staircase, view from above, intriguing the viewer and conducing him to

lean out, symbolically, in order to discover what is hidden at the end of it, in a perspective game reminding the

masterpieces of Escher; instead, in De Naeyer, the mystery gives way to a sense of decadence, visible in the

plaster peeled off from the ceiling, which contrasts, however, with the elegance of the ancient Belgian building,

embellished by delicate decorative details, such as the stained glass window and the refined motif with golden

shoots running along the walls under the ceiling. The same contrast returns in Orfanotrofio, in which a broad and

stately staircase, frontal framed, embracing the view of the spectator, by introducing him in a rich but decadent

hall with a decorated pavement. Here the ivy covering the floor, the plaster peeled off and a wild garden visible

through the window, remind the words of the artist, by which “more quickly than you might expect, grass will

sprout through roads, trees will engulf buildings and wildlife will return to city streets. Eventually nature will

reclaim the environment”. Striking words which urge us to reflect on the nature’s power and on its delicate

relationship with human.

Art Curator Marta Graziano

Rusty Orange

Orfanotrofio

Rusty Orange

De Naeyer

Rusty Orange

S.A.C.C.I

Santina Mastrangelo

“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the

feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.”

(Vincent Van Gogh)

Santina Mastrangelo is an English artist, whose work consists of several layers of images, texts and signs in relation to

a journey, whether short or long. “The Seer V1”, an abstract exploration that incorporates the concept of stratification,

in which Santina makes color and the idea of landscape its focal point. Her research focuses essentially on the human

condition and its totality through the evocation of visual and mental landscapes that unite and involve any human

experience, be it subjective or objective. Her artistic work, through research and deconstruction, creates visual narratives

that evoke mental landscapes and scenarios necessarily interconnected with each other. An imaginative superstructure,

which takes on its own connotations of stratifications of memory and personal knowledge. Painting is presented in

multiple aesthetic and material forms, where the surface becomes an integral part of the artistic process. The materials

used by the young artist are also born from a pragmatic and meticulous study of a story that wants to be told and

represented not only visually but above all experientially. Through their use, Santina reinterprets and reworks the

past, the present and the future, as a formal prerequisite to achieve a personal identification of a certain vision that

is often hidden under patches of color. Like linguistic stratifications, the artist’s work is made of precise narrative

codes, a sort of writing that is told through symbols, hieroglyphs or visual compositions. It is an archetypal language

that works through combinations to produce cognitive processes that activate the narrative between the human being,

the environment and the culture that surrounds him. Her, are abstract compositions that must not represent what it is

but what has been imagined over and over again, reassembled, superimposed or collected in the course of their own

growth processes. A concept of ideal nature that starts from memory to rework a union of inner emotions in perpetual

change. The choice of supporting materials highlights both the absence of a precise temporal flow: a language shared

and constantly evolving through which the viewer tries to complete its features and to rebuild its emotional characters.

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” (Auguste Rodin)


Santina Mastrangelo

The Seer V1, 2020

Shawn Park

The artist Shawn Park studies and uses different tools to find the best way to develop and give life to her dreams. From

photography to sculpture, from drawing to oriental paintings reaching to technologically advanced digital programs,

Shawn wants to express her moods and emotions, visualizing the boundary between ideal and illusion. Each methodology

used within her works has precise characteristics and interacts with the observer in a different way: for this reason, the

artist is constantly looking for the perfect means that is in line with the historical moment and the new generation of

our day and age. For instance, in “Aura” the entire work is lightened by a single focal point placed at the center of the

photograph. The light, emanating from that perfect form, helps the artist to interact with different fields, from science

to visual art. That halo of mystery that surrounds the light source gives rise to a surprising vision, transforming the

entire space of the work into a real black box designed by the luminous material. The white strikes the viewer as a great

silence that seems absolute: the white becomes absence of sound, as a place of purity and invisible, capable of telling

abstract stories drawn from pure imagination. While in “Stream”, what attracts the attention is the texture of this rock

which becomes sinuous and soft like a silk. The red shades accompany this evolutionary process, moving together like

water in a stream. Even in this case a light beam completely radiates the inside of this basin, creating a remarkable

contrast between the upper and lower space. Finally, in “Tranquil Peace”, art and nature come together to create a pure

and perfect image of such a harmonious and heavenly environment. The lush vegetation gives color to the water mirror

just like a real painting. A mystical and serene atmosphere emerges, in which each element recalls the famous series on

water lilies by the impressionist painter Claude Monet: in fact, through this representation, the boundary between art

and reality is subtle and clearly visible. Shawn Park’s narrative works aim to broaden the view of the world, with the

aim of reaching the public through a fairy tale composed of images, stimulating the imagination and creating a unique

means to communicate directly with the observer.


Shawn Park

Tranquil Peace

Shawn Park

Stream

Shawn Park

Aura

Simón Calle

“Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps

under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I simply should recognize,

learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.” (André Breton)

Simón Calle was born in 1989 in Bogotá. His personal photographic research accompanies us on a journey made of

comparisons. His investigation of the human soul is both through the art of portraiture and through more conceptual

images that, instead, want to give shape to the subconscious. He opens us to a confrontation with different cultures,

traveling to Colombia, he documents situations of social conflicts whose difficulties can be seen on the faces of his

portraits. Tired and marked faces full of dignity. The strength of his portraits lies in giving full power to the face of the

person who is in the foreground, where the eyes and the details of the skin prevail over everything else. Black and white

eliminates any distraction and all we see is the experience of these people. The work proposed here is, instead, part of

the investigation relating to the subconscious. His style is characterized by the use of black and white with an effect

that looks like an old film. Burns and errors are intentionally inserted in order to communicate a landscape far from

reality and at the same time a bit dark and difficult to see clearly, just like our unconscious. We see two men by the sea,

we understand that they are talking, one points to the other in a direction, it is night and we only see their silhouettes

that emerge thanks to the sea waves illuminated in the background. The light sources are difficult to place, they do

not follow a precise logic and this helps in making everything unreal. The few people present in these photographs of

Simón, are always from behind and their faces are not visible. For this reason, it is easy to identify and find yourself

immersed in these surreal settings, at the same time peaceful and disturbing. The journey within ourselves begins at the

moment of our birth and continues every day in billions of different ways. What Simón continues to investigate with

this project is open with multiple interpretations. Everyone sees with their own eyes and reads with their own mind,

trying to listen to their own unconscious.


Simón Calle

Thoughts in the desert

Simón Calle

The nocturnes

Simón Calle

Alice

Simón Calle

Childhood memories

Simón Calle

Under Sea

Sonsoles Romero

“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long

as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting

about nothing.” (Mark Rothko

Sonsoles Romero is an Argentine artist and photographer. Photography, drawing and painting for Sonsoles

are necessary tools in order to investigate human nature, digging deeply into its heterogeneity, to extrapolate

the best of each individual. With this idea Sonsoles summarizes the deep meaning of her art. A way for her to

observe the other, approach him, “steal his soul” and grasp his essence through the camera. Her portraits speak

with the eyes, have a perfect and natural understanding, are unaware of being photographed and this inevitably

makes the image more spontaneous and true. Her is a careful and sensitive look at human nature, narrated

through black and white images that reach a unique harmony focusing on the relationship between individuals

and the surrounding space. The Argentine photographer, in regaining the connection between these two thickets,

manages to reveal to herself and to others, intangible things, lights and shadows, beauty. Her shot is immediate,

understandable and attentive. The immortalized subject is living her everyday life, as every day. She’s on the

street or in a subway car, in the middle of a crowd, absorbed in her thoughts. Her gaze does not clash with that of

those who are watching her, nor with the viewer of the photo. “Panoptic” represents a set of elements that make

the artist deeply sensitive and able to grasp even the invisible. Historically Panòpticon is a project of an ideal

prison thought in 1791 by the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham. The idea was to allow a single supervisor

to observe all the cells, all the corridors, all the entrances and all the exits of the structure. The idea of the

panòpticon had a great resonance, also as a metaphor of an invisible power, inspiring thinkers and philosophers

such as Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky, Zygmunt Bauman and the British writer George Orwell in the work

“1984.

“I will be an artist or nothing!” (Eugene O’Neill)


Sonsoles Romero

Panoptic

Stéphanie Pfeiffer

“The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you

find in the street.” (Robert Doisneau)

Stéphanie Pfeiffer is a Parisian photographer that has focused her work on documenting the faces of the inhabitants

of Paris for years. Every day she walks the streets of this city looking at new subjects for her blog, with the aim

of making the most disparate characters known to the world. Extravagant looks, aged on a walk, young couples,

friends sitting at the cafe. We can see infinite smiles in her photographs scattered with details that describe the

Parisian lifestyle: a distinguished gentleman has just finished reading the newspaper “Le Figaro”, two boys

are leaving a venue with a baguette under the arm. The strangers stimulate Stéphanie’s curiosity and she does

not just take a picture, but also searches for their story, giving a real face to these people. Enhancing them, she

shortens the distances between us and them, whetting our interest in the culture of one of the most famous cities

in the world. It is an unusual Paris that she takes us to. Thanks to her work we can experience this city in a

different way, seeing through her eyes. Only the inhabitants can reveal the true identity of a place. They are the

ones who shape and model every space at any moment. Sometimes photography has the power to change value

and take on new meanings with the passage of time and with the change of society. Thanks to Stéphanie, one

day we will have access to a historical documentation of a 21st century Paris.


Stéphanie Pfeiffer

Dome Villiers Serge

Stéphanie Pfeiffer

La fête dans ma tête Boulangerie

Stéphanie Pfeiffer

Rodrigo Place St.Georges

Tjeerd Doosje

“Faces rarely deceive. You have the soul of your face and the face of your soul.” (Paul Brulat)

Tjeerd’s photography is a kind of journey to discover feelings and souls. Young women are the protagonists of

his works, they are the center of the composition, the whole surrounding environment revolves around them and

it almost seems that the space adapts by hosting and welcoming them. Lively looks and intense gestures are the

driving force of the photographs, from which energy is released. Artists have always turned their gaze to the

human face, in particular to that of women. Faces that were intended to represent vices and virtues, feelings and

passions. The portrait is an extremely topical issue despite having very ancient roots, in contemporary society

the image of one’s face is what we use most, just think of the world of social media. If we are used to seeing, in

advertising, continuously images of perfect, almost unreal, flawless faces, Tjeerd’s photos feature women with

real feelings, their faces reveal sensitivity, shyness or even self-confidence. When Vermeer painted “The Girl

with a Pearl Earring” a masterpiece of simplicity and sweetness emerged, as happens with Tjeerd’s faces, he

manages to capture the simplicity in the extraordinary beauty of these faces.

“The truth is always found in simplicity, never in confusion.” (Isaac Newton)


Tjeerd Doosje

Teline (1405)

Tjeerd Doosje

Teline (1143)

Tjeerd Doosje

Pien (0709)

Tjeerd Doosje

Teline (0833)

Tjeerd Doosje

Claartje (1803)

Tjeerd Doosje

Selia (0212)

Tjeerd Doosje

Claartje (1504)

Valerio Brignola

Valerio Brignola is an Italian photographer, born and based in Napoli. Photography has been his passion since he

was a child and aftersecondary school, he decided to study photography. His favourite subjects undeoubdly are

landscapes and macro subjects. An example of the great sensitivity that emerges from his photographs is “The

hidden man”, a shot taken during the quarantine period in which, because of the Corona virus, we were forced to

remain closed for months within the walls of our houses. The choice to shoot in black and white accentuates the

dramatic charge of the shot that portrays a man walking with his dog: one of the few reasons why people were

allowed to leave their homes. The decentralized subject and the large number of lines that visually intertwine,

give movement and dynamism to the photographic composition. The light, coming from the right, stretches out

the shadows of the man, the dog and the light pole, behind which the man’s face is hidden. The play of light

and shadow that is created, produces a sense of desolation that brings to mind the world’s difficult period, due

to Covid-19 outbreak. All this is even more accentuated by the perspective: undoubtedly Brignola takes the

photograph from a window of his home, the only way left to observe the world outside the home.


Valerio Brignola

The hidden man

Yuika Asoi

The young artist Yuika is first of all a researcher, she goes in search of places where she scrutinizes the details

and the beauty that is in them. Yuika takes us on a journey into nature and manages to completely immerse the

viewer in it. The Japanese artist, through photography, captures moments, sounds, smells and sensations. Mirror

of water in which small and light waves sway, giving life to a unique spectacle. The colors that tell the passage of

time and the seasons create textures of extreme beauty. Small details, such as a leaf gently landing on the water,

are there to capture the viewer’s attention and move him. Yuika’s art is true landscape photography but with an

impressionist soul. If the painters of this artistic movement have given great value to light, just as Yuika makes

good use of it, it is no coincidence that the etymology of the word photography is “writing with light”. The main

subject of the young artist’s work is water, the great masters who throughout history have paid homage to this

element immediately come to mind. Undoubtedly the works of Yuika make one think of the works of the great

genius Monet, it seems that Yuika has traveled in time and stole the shots where Monet painted his water lilies.

In Yuika’s photographs one perceives a great calm and a strong balance, the viewer is pervaded by a wave of

serenity, the one that only the sight of nature can give. The composition of the works is extremely balanced, her

work is the perfect fusion of shadow and light, color, movement and sound. Yuika gives the viewer a moment

of true happiness.


Yuika Asoi

A swaying planet

Yuika Asoi

Autumn

Yuika Asoi

Garden

MADS MIL@NO PHOTO AWARD CATA DEF

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