Claudio Gobbi’s photos on display in Venice
The two photographic projects created by Claudio Gobbi and set up in the rooms of Ca ‘Pesaro, in Venice, address the theme of cultural identity by putting in dialogue architectural models that are geographically and chronologically distant. But emotionally complementary
The narratives underlying the two photographic series conceived by Claudio Gobbi (Ancona, 1971) and presented in as many sales of the International Gallery of Modern Art – Ca ‘Pesaro in Venice. On the one hand there is the diffusion – conceptual and visual – of Armenian villas: 64 images, some of which made by Gobbi, others kept by archives of various countries and others still unearthed on the Net or commissioned to different authors, which testify the immutability of the archetype of the Armenian church, whose architecture has survived 1500 years of history by taking root in geographic areas far from the Caucasian. On the other hand, however, there is the dissemination of the collective identity associated with the theater as a place of sharing and cultural memory: the shots, made in over twenty-five-five, return silent fragments of strictly empty twentieth-century audiences and foyers, wings and stages.
CLAUDIO GOBBI’S PHOTOGRAPHS IN VENICE
To unite the two narrative registers is the increasingly clear definition of a geography which, overcoming the limits of longitudes and latitudes, finds its anchor point and its compass in the idea of persistence. L’Atlas of persistence that gives the exhibition its title is made up of the permanent aspects that distinguish an archetype and that reverberate in the events of those who have to deal daily with forms, places, spaces capable of withstanding time. Armenian churches and theaters therefore fall within the same horizon of community cultural identity, engaging in an even broader and decidedly current reflection on the border. The exhibition, curated by Francesca Fabiani, is the result of the dialogue between the Regional Directorate of the Veneto Museums and the Central Institute for Catalog and Documentation (ICCD) of the Ministry of Culture, which recently chose to also include the contemporary in the its consolidated activity of promotion of photographic language, expanding beyond its headquarters in Rome with the ICCD OFF SITE initiative. An atlas of persistence is the first chapter of a series of events that present a residence in various venues and Venetian positive sequences, giving a virtuous collaboration.
– Arianna Testino