Luca Gilli Di/Stanze shots from Incipit and Blank

Photography is the protagonist of the appointment that opens the 2018 exhibition program of the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini in Milan. From February 9 to April 8, 2018, in fact, the exhibition Di/stanze, curated by Matteo Bergamini, will be held, which brings together 21 photographs by Luca Gilli selected from recent cycles of works entitled Incipit and Blank, dedicated respectively to the construction of the Holy See pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 (Incipit) and to the investigation of interior spaces under construction, closed environments and construction sites (Blank, 2008-2017). The body of the exhibition revolves around the concept of “pictoriality” that is discovered in both of Gilli’s series, formalized by the photographer using as subjects a series of components found in interiors under construction, where the excessive use of light alters the viewer’s perception by creating walls without end or corners, spaces without depth.

As the curator writes: “Luca Gilli’s “Di/Stanze” exhibition collects a selection of the most “pictorial” shots taken by the author, taken from his most recent series: Incipit – especially – and Blank. They seem to wink at the works of the great masters of Abstract Expressionism, the Color Field, or the Achromes of Manzoni’s memory. What a mistake! Perception may slip fully to other sources, but underlying Gilli’s work is the composition of architecture.” Brushstrokes of color on wet wall and concrete, styrofoam bags, electrical conduits, mason’s pencil marks, future air vents and drainpipes are the subjects of the investigation that remain-once fixed-far from their nature and any other recognizable form. Gilli’s photographs of allusion, exhibited at the Diocesan Museum, stand far apart from the ever-vivid and common perception of photography as a medium for “depiction.” They are evanescent images, far from a physical celebration, from carnality, on the border between the visible and invisible worlds, where the devices of perspective are annulled in favor of a vision beyond the limit. Gilli captures interiors that will be inhabited, fragments of “rooms” still far from their objecthood and their ultimate everyday purpose, which we can intend, imagine and grasp – succeeding or not – only by attempting to nullify the gap between the transposed evidence and the original framing. The initiative is realized in collaboration with Paola Sosio Contemporary Art in Milan
Curated by Matteo Bergamini

Inauguration Thursday, February 8, 2018 6:00 p.m.
Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini, Chiostri di Sant Eustorgio (Milan)
February 9 – April 8, 2018