NOEMA GALLERY – MIA PHOTO FAIR

Genius Loci is the name of Roberto Cotroneo ‘s photography project exhibited at Noema Gallery ‘s booth 20/a at the prestigious international Mia Photo Fair in Milan.

An eclectic figure in the Italian cultural world of the last two decades, journalist, writer, poet and essayist, Roberto Cotroneo has been devoting himself to photography professionally for a few years now, considering it a fundamental element of his critical and creative path, sometimes associating images with texts that are meant to be complementary to photographic thought. 
He believes that the duty of an intellectual and an artist is to fuse knowledge, combining the sensibility of the image with that of the word. 
He chose photography as the pivot of this process and Noema Gallery, as the Italian Gallery to represent him.
 
… The Genius Loci Project could only be born in Rome, not only for the semantic features of the title but also and especially for what this city has represented in the construction of Western culture. Rome represents more than a physical place. It is an almost iconic mental space, whose incredible layering still perfectly visible and perceptible in the air we breathe there, is in the minds of each of us even if we have never been there.

The author is at ease in such a rich and dense environment and through the Genius Loci takes us into unexpected territories ; his being a writer, poet and essayist as well as a photographer allows him to hide within the frame more meanings…

…The museum is presented to us as a place of connection between past and present, both of which are necessary elements in the construction of the future so obsessively needed in our society terrorized by the fear of death. Thus places with statues and paintings waiting to be observed come alive with people, generically called visitors but really human beings, each of whom brings into the exhibition halls se himself, his own world, his loves, his problems, his culture, his clothing, his obsessions and especially his smartphone …. so his photographs in their unconscious elegance tell of the human landscape, but not of that which materializes within the frame but rather than that which stands outside the places photographed….The clothing, the assemblages, a subtle and consistent underlying sloppiness in attitudes that denounce often disenchanted behavior, are all elements that contribute to the construction Of our contemporary image. This is not a judgment of merit but just an observation……(taken from the curatorship: “Introduction to the exhibition” by Aldo Sardoni – Artistic Director of Noema Gallery).

The photography project “Genius Loci” then will continue by exhibiting 50 Photographs from April 4 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome for two months and then until October 31 at the Otranto Castle.
The project is also accompanied by the book of the same name written by Roberto Cotroneo himself and published by Contrasto.  

Exhibition curated by Maria Cristina de Zuccato and Aldo Sardoni

To see photos of the setup: https://corniciefotodautore.com/it/portfolio/noema-gallery-mia-photo-fair/10397

For more information: http://www.noemagallery.com/