Guido Guidi: From the Interior
24 Apr–3 Jul 2015 From the Interior is a solo exhibition of photographic works by the Italian photographer Guido Guidi. This is Guidi’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.
In 1983, Guidi created a short photographic series, taken inside a room in Preganziol, a ‘comune’, or region, in the province of Treviso about 20 kilometres north west of Venice. Preganziol consists of sixteen images, taken within the confines of four bare walls. The only light is from two small windows, opposite one another and the series follows the shifting of light across the walls as time progresses through the day.
As Roberta Valtorta has written in her essay Space, Time, Void: This important sequence by Guido Guidi is a jewel in contemporary Italian photography. It can be understood as an attempt to measure –space-time in terms of the element that brings photography into being: light. The space enclosed by the room (or house, or any abode) is chosen by Guidi as a container of light, a place which actually exists, and which asserts its existence by virtue of that very light. The external world, here evoked by the vegetation glimpsed through the window, enters the picture indirectly, implying that the photograph is little more than a fragment, and that, beyond the frame, reality goes on unfolding, immeasurable, endless.
Guidi is interested in mapping the subtle changes of familiar places. For him photography is something autobiographical; it is synonymous with inhabiting, and the camera is the instrument that allows him to observe, appropriate and collect evidence and traces of lives experienced. The artist has stated: In the moment that I take a photograph of something I feel that I am that thing; … I am what I photograph in the moment that I am photographing it. At least it is an attempt to be it, even if it is imperfect and imprecise. It is as if I am praying.
Excerpt from a conversation with Antonello Frongia and Laura Moro, Ronta di Cesena, 6 May, 2013.
In 1983, Guidi created a short photographic series, taken inside a room in Preganziol, a ‘comune’, or region, in the province of Treviso about 20 kilometres north west of Venice. Preganziol consists of sixteen images, taken within the confines of four bare walls. The only light is from two small windows, opposite one another and the series follows the shifting of light across the walls as time progresses through the day.
As Roberta Valtorta has written in her essay Space, Time, Void: This important sequence by Guido Guidi is a jewel in contemporary Italian photography. It can be understood as an attempt to measure –space-time in terms of the element that brings photography into being: light. The space enclosed by the room (or house, or any abode) is chosen by Guidi as a container of light, a place which actually exists, and which asserts its existence by virtue of that very light. The external world, here evoked by the vegetation glimpsed through the window, enters the picture indirectly, implying that the photograph is little more than a fragment, and that, beyond the frame, reality goes on unfolding, immeasurable, endless.
Guidi is interested in mapping the subtle changes of familiar places. For him photography is something autobiographical; it is synonymous with inhabiting, and the camera is the instrument that allows him to observe, appropriate and collect evidence and traces of lives experienced. The artist has stated: In the moment that I take a photograph of something I feel that I am that thing; … I am what I photograph in the moment that I am photographing it. At least it is an attempt to be it, even if it is imperfect and imprecise. It is as if I am praying.
Excerpt from a conversation with Antonello Frongia and Laura Moro, Ronta di Cesena, 6 May, 2013.