On the occasion of Rome Art Week, Gallery 291 Est is pleased to present Periferie Immaginarie, a solo exhibition by Emmanuele Mattiocco, on show from 27 October to 3 December 2022
In a redefinition of the usual visual narrative of urban architecture and its formal poetics, Periferie Immaginarie focuses on the possible implications of the photographic process. The peculiarity of this black and white analogue series on 35mm film lies, in fact, in the work carried out in the darkroom: here Emmanuele Mattiocco (Rome, 1980), by intervening directly on the negatives, cut out following the lines and geometric shapes and then reassembled in unprecedented architectures, gives life to a new photographic matrix that will be impressed on polythene paper.
Essentially, Periferie Immaginarie does not aim to map either the Roman periphery or its architecture in the strict sense, but rather to lead us to a breakdown of the usual photographic perspective. In this sense, the manipulation of the negative destroys the original 'instant', transforming the place of development into that of a new 'shot', recreated by the artist himself and not immortalised through the lens. And if each shot is unrepeatable, by irreversibly altering a document of reality and transcending the analogue 'writing of light', the role of the photographer-artist is called into question as much as the very concept of 'photography'. Here, by highlighting a synthetic subjectification of space, which from real becomes mental, Emmanuele Mattiocco reveals to us an intrinsically 'performative' essence of photography.
This is not, therefore, a photographic exhibition but properly an ontological exhibition on photography, involving space: both that of the suburbs, as the subject of exegesis on negative, and that of the darkroom, as its conceptual medium. A research that, with the curatorial co-participation of Rossella Della Vecchia, translates into the immersive setting of Gallery 291 Est, specially conceived by gallery owner Vania Caruso, involving the public in the photosensitive experience of the darkroom. In the construction of a red atmosphere that, in the technical reference to inattinic lighting, filters the light from the outside, the images of Periferie Immaginarie will first show themselves latent and then revealed, enabling the spectator to explore them with the same analytical process of the artist: a slow and accurate way of fruition that reaffirms the importance of time and observation in photography.
