Gea Casolaro • Visioni dell'EUR
The solo exhibition by Gea Casolaro entitled Visioni dell’Eur opens on Wednesday, May 9 at 6:30 p.m. in the exhibition spaces of Careof – la Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. The exhibition was previously presented in Rome last year in the exhibition spaces of Casa del Cinema at Villa Borghese as part of the fifth edition of Fotografia–Festival Internazionale di Roma.
Curated by Raffaele Gavarro and realized in collaboration with The Gallery Apart, the exhibition offers a unique perspective on some of the most famous films that used the Eur district of Rome as a set, constructing an intimate and familiar path. There are places which, once they attain the status of image, derive from it an expressive power that exceeds any expectation. Eur is undoubtedly one of these. An emblematic place of a modernity made of empty spaces and metaphysical geometries, where solitude and anguish intertwine with an extreme and desperate faith in the future. Within these spaces and from these sentiments, many extraordinary cinematic visions by some of the most important Italian directors have taken shape, among whom we recall at least Antonioni, Fellini, and Petri. But in those same places where films such as L’Eclissi, La decima vittima, Otto e mezzo, or La dolce vita were shot, people lived an entirely ordinary daily life, certainly devoid of those poetic tensions.
These are the premises of Visioni dell’EUR, a work that Gea Casolaro created through the patient research of film stills and family photographic images taken in the 1960s and 1970s, all referencing the same locations. Thus, pairs of images were formed, reconstructed by the artist as unified compositions, making visible the dual perception—real and imaginative—that characterizes Eur, and above all, the images that portray it.
The exhibition unfolds through a dozen paired images that form an unprecedented visual landscape of Eur. For the private photos, the "Album di Roma" archive proved invaluable: an initiative through which the Libraries of Rome are collecting citizens’ photographs, reconstructing a sort of private history of the city.
Bio
Gea Casolaro was born in Rome in 1965, where she lives.
Since 1994, primarily through the use of photography, she has analyzed the infinite realities contained in every image, in every gaze.
She won the Premio Suzzara in 1996, and in 1998 participated in workshops organized in Sarajevo by the Biennale giovani artisti dell’Europa e del Mediterraneo, creating Maybe in Sarajevo, published by Meltemi editore in 2001 and exhibited not only at the Biennale giovani in Rome but also in several solo shows: in 2000 at ViaFarini in Milan, Ar/ge kunst in Bolzano, and D’AC in Ciampino; and in 2002 in the group exhibition Exit at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin.
Her video and photo installation Doppio sguardo was presented in 2003 at Galleria Estro in Padua and in Anteprima XIV Quadriennale at Palazzo Reale in Naples, and the following year in Venice as part of the exhibition Retentiva - Funzioni e disfunzioni della fotografia italiana attuale.
Her video Volver atrás para ir adelante, shot in Argentina just after the economic crisis, was the winner of the competition The video game and is also included in the traveling exhibition On air, video in onda dall’Italia, curated by Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone. The same work was the focus in 2004 of a solo show of the same name, organized by The Gallery Apart at Teatro India in Rome and presented in 2005 at the “Festival International de Cinéma Vision du Réel” in Nyon and in the exhibition Ti voglio bene, from Italy with love at Raid Project in Los Angeles. It will also be featured in the upcoming exhibition Elettroshock - Il video in Italia dagli anni ‘70 a oggi (1973-2006), scheduled to take place in Beijing and Canton.
She was one of six international artists who led the workshops for Networking 2005 and, again in the Tuscany Region, she has just completed a work specially created for the latest edition of “Spread in Prato”.
In 2006, her video Due Palermo uno sguardo, made using images of Palermo and Buenos Aires, was presented in the group exhibition Girato a Palermo hosted by Kals’art – Palermo and is currently part of the traveling show On the Edge of Vision New Idioms in Indian & Italian Contemporary Art, scheduled in Kolkata, New Delhi, and Mumbai (India).
Also in 2006, she was featured in MEET Photography II (workshop) and in Lampi sull’acqua. La citta visibile (group show) organized by VENEZIA IMMAGINE on the Island of San Servolo.
