The Others: Art Fair

Lab 1930. Fotografia contemporanea presents at The Others art fair 2023 a dialogue on the "fragility" of man and nature and their close interdependence through the series of four artists: Alessandra Baldoni, Alessandra Calò, Caroline Gavazzi, and Alessandro Vicario.

In addition to a selection of works from recent series, small numbered photobooks, signed by the artist and accompanied by fine art prints made by Lab 1930 will also be presented.

Alessandra Baldoni's Lazy Gods and Lazy Fate (2022) is a series created in collaboration with the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria in Perugia.
Baldoni was able to photograph details of the Gallery's dismantling (bubble wrap, electrical sockets, etc.) that took place in 2021 and relate them to details of the works, which became "very human" and fragile the moment they were detached from the wall and lost their status as "works of art". The result was a game of cross-references between forms reinforced by poetic suggestions written by the artist herself. The photobook features texts by Marco Pierini, director of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, and Ilaria Batassa.

Alessandra Calò's The Garden's Tale (2022-ongoing) brings out our "inner garden" from the darkness. As Lóránd Hegyi writes in the critical essay: "The darkness forces the viewer to enter into the realm of something unknown and mysterious, into the territory of uncertainty and improbability. But this uncertainty opens paths in the darkness that guide the viewer to encounter unexperienced realities. It could also be said that the absence of light, which enables us to see real things in their real surroundings in real time, replaces the perception of the given world with the imagination of possible worlds. The less we see and recognize, the more we imagine and create in our mind. Alessandra Calò guides the viewer through her nightly universe and reveals an extremely subtle, poetic vision of unlimited variations of almost invisible microrealities and small, seemingly insignificant elements of nature as well, as the human surroundings. The viewer enters into this poetical, almost unfathomable and incomprehensible universe of difficultly identifiable microrealities paradoxically not through the light but through darkness; the phantasy replaces the visibility, the imaginary replaces the documentation of things. Instead of precise observation of given reality, the imagination takes over these mysterious, picturesque terrains of obscurity and uncertainty."

Papilio On Resin and Out of The Box are two three-dimensional series (photography and mixed media) by Caroline Gavazzi that investigate our relationship with the natural environment and the fragility of nature. At first glance, the viewer is struck by the aesthetic composure of these works, but later a sense of estrangement takes over. Nature is compressed due to man's intervention, it is imprisoned, it must continually adapt to our rules in order to survive: this seems to be denounced by the butterflies of Papilio On Resin which with their three-dimensionality try to fly away from the resin that imprisons them.

Finally, Alessandro Vicario's Tree Maps (2015-ongoing) become mirrors of our consciousness as tree barks become maps of mysterious and unexplored territories specific to each of us, thus revealing the close correlations between us and the natural world.