Essential and evocative. Lazy Gods And Lazy Fate, Alessandra Baldoni's new exhibition is a tale of a "suspended time" in the midst of the radical aesthetic and functional metamorphosis of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, desired by its director Marco Pierini and completed in June 2022.
The exhibition, under the patronage of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria itself, is accompanied by a photobook in 40 signed copies and an artist's book in 30 copies containing Fine Art prints by the artist in three different formats.
The six photographic works exhibited in Milan reveal the "body to body" in solitude that Alessandra Baldoni has had the privilege of having with priceless works of art, but in that precise circumstance "naked," vulnerable, temporarily deprived of their sacredness. "I remember the silence, my moving cautiously and in amazement among bustling works, marks left on the wall like sacred wear and tear, nails and holes recalling the blood of pierced feet next door; fiercely gazing lions and disheveled wires, sockets bearing the light that rests on the haloes of angels, packaging and papers protecting something precious, the divine consumed by time, plasterwork, screws. And then dust, imperfection waiting for healing, the faces of martyred saints, angels and gods as if hanging on a question: they, the eternal ones, wondering about the future, waiting for change, for revolution."
Alessandra Baldoni narrates a bewilderment, personal and of the works themselves, in the face of a transition that marked an epochal change for a place like the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, which today looks ahead with new ways of telling and experiencing art, between past and contemporary.
The photographic diptychs on display in Milan – one of which will become part of the permanent collection of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria – reflect on the transformation and persistence of the sacred and the sublime in a transitional phase, where the artist extrapolates fragments and isolates details of marvelous works by confronting them with simple but at the same time fundamental tools of any architectural transformation such as a tangle of cables, a plug, a dowel in the wall, nails or a roll of bubble wrap.
The chaos generated during the rearrangement phase of the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, together with the marks left by works detached from the walls or moved from the floor, become for Alessandra Baldoni traces of a temporary passing, transforming works of art that usually instill awe and respect into fragile and vulnerable existences of the sublime.
The exhibited works, each of which ideally refers back to the other without ever arriving at a linear narrative, are accompanied by short poetic suggestions written by the artist herself, where images and words take on the same valence.
The entire series of 12 photographic works between diptychs and triptychs that make up Lazy Gods And Lazy Fate is contained in the photobook published by Lab 1930 in a limited edition of 40 copies and signed by the artist.
In addition to the photobook, an artist's book is printed in 30 copies signed and numbered from I to XXX with the cover manually personalized by the artist.
Each artist's book contains a Fine Art print of a diptych by Alessandra Baldoni that does not appear in the exhibition, made specifically for the book in three different formats – small, medium and large – and in 3 different subjects, one for each format. Each diptych is also accompanied by a poetic suggestion.
