LIGHT/SHADOW/SUBSTANCE

Artists with their works and their thoughts photographed by Ilaria Di Giustili

There is a special relationship between artists and their works, which goes far beyond having created something with their hands: each work is in one way or another the emanation of a thought, of a state of mind, of a research carried out over time.

In recent years Ilaria Di Giustili has begun to pose artists with their works, thus trying to tell something about that particular relationship: it is an operation that we could define as almost metaphysical, because she herself - with her objective - adds a personal vision to the story, guiding our perception in the direction she wanted.

There is clear fun in this project, which presupposes a special relationship also between the photographer and the artist, because, in fact, these shots become portraits with "attribute": we have known of them in the form of self-portraits at least since the sixteenth century - when that is, artists acquire self-awareness and find the right compromise between technical know-how and pride in an intellectual profession - but there is a real mass of this in the impressionist nineteenth century and then again in photography from its beginnings.

It is a story of the living present, but which in Ilaria Di Giustili's shot becomes a surreal construction, full of classical quotes, which takes us towards an archetypal dimension of portraiture and composition.

For Rome Art Week 2023 Ilaria Di Giustili creates a flash event around this project in her Giardino Segreto Gallery: not only her shots, but some of the artists' works exhibited together with the photographs, giving light and shadow to the photographic technique the substance of matter. And, at least in one case, the work will be an artist herself, like a tableau vivant illuminated at night on the edge of the garden.

The installation enhances the discussion with a special play of lighting which will see the shots gradually disappear in the evening darkness to instead preserve the light around the works, which fades as night falls: the magic slowly goes out, leaving in the our soul echoes of memory from a time no longer definable.

The artists who are joining the project:

Mariangela Ardovini (I studied Accounting); Osvaldo Tiberti Art and Jewelry; Gianluca Esposito; Fabio Maria Alecci; Vanzuk; Alessandro Bellomarini

One of a kind and can only be visited for one day, Saturday 28 October 2023 from 5pm to 11pm in the Secret Garden Gallery Rome - Via Gregorio XI, 122 - 00166