"Antonio Biasiucci. Arca" exhibition in Turin

Gallerie d'Italia - Turin present the exhibition Antonio Biasiucci. Arca by Roberto Koch to the public. It is the third instalment of the project “La Grande Fotografia Italiana” (Great Italian Photography), launched in 2022 with the Lisetta Carmi exhibition and continued in 2023 with Mimmo Jodice, designed to pay homage to the great masters of 20th century photography in Italy.

One of the most interesting and innovative contemporary masters of our time, Antonio Biasiucci (Dragoni, 1961) has been pursuing a practice inspired by an absolute version of language for many years now. A complex work, far from simple, but a precise, targeted one that simplifies–perhaps even strips down–the act of taking a picture to a continuous renewal of forms in search of absolute symbols.

In this exhibition, with more than 250 photographs on display, the different chapters of Biasiucci's “utopian poem” are presented together for the first time: from powerful polyptychs to sequences of images and single works, the goal is to create a poetic, extended representation of the life of human beings, resulting in a chart that touches on the profound themes of existence, the essential elements of life, always starting from personal experience and, therefore, from the autobiographical elements that make up the foundation of the artist's character and sensibilities.

Biasiucci's search focuses on classic big topics such as knowledge, the basis of nutrition or the starry sky. The volumes of the Banco di Napoli archive in the Codex series thus become, decontextualised, architectural elements–foundations for new, possible constructions. And the loaves captured in the daily work of hands appear like planets in the universe–meteorites appearing and disappearing in the sky. Yet the artist also applies this same outlook to highly topical content, such as the drama of migrants, which inspired the series The Dream.

The deep blackness in which everything is often shrouded in Biasiucci's photographs demands a special effort from the viewer: that of being transported by the wonder of experiencing and recognising the primordial flash of light, the source, the origin of life that we recognise in forms that reveal themselves dynamically in transformation. It all has to do with something essential, like the Ark that contains archetypes, or like the pyramid, the utopian construction made of many possible pieces, of an effort and a dream of the absolute.

The project “La Grande Fotografia Italiana” (Great Italian Photography) features a different artist in each exhibition. And so on the three monoliths that occupy the central space of the exhibition–amidst Biasiucci's loaves, skulls and casts–are the unexpected appearances of Mimmo Paladino. His primitive drawings, his numbers etched in black ink, in an intimate dialogue with the photographs, are imaginative forms, and their infinite, anonymous nature speaks to us of the multiplicity of human beings.