Maimeri Foundation is pleased to present “Sacred & Profane”: the magical realism, a new exhibition by photographer Monica Silva in Milan at the M.A.C. Culture, Art space, curated by Andrea Dusio
M.A.C. - Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro 1, Milan, From 17th to 21st September 2019
Vernissage Tuesday, September 17th at 6:30pm
Milan, July 29th, 2019 – Maimeri Foundation (https://www.facebook.com/fondazionemaimeri/) presents the photographic exhibition by Artist Monica Silva (www.msilva.photography/) – a prominent Brazilian photographer, great portraitist and versatile artist - "Sacred & Profane” will take place in Milan at the MAC, Culture, Music and Art space (Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro, 1) from September 17th to 21st, 2019. The body of work, consists of a series of 40 wide format images, including a host of inedited pieces, starting from her most famous portraits and previous projects as the well-known "Banana Golden Pop Art" a tribute to Andy Warhol (2014), "Lux et filum - a Contemporary Vision of Caravaggio" (2014), to the recent inedited projects "Flower Power" (2018), "Coca Cola Series" (2019) and "Golden Sexy Fruit" (2019).
Extracts from the essay:
SACRED & PROFANE - The magical realism of Monica Silva
“The title "Sacred & Profane" - curated by Andrea Dusio - refers to an intangible dimension that concerns the retina's ability to capture something that the camera’s lens is not able to see, and that belongs to a magical, mysterious act. [..] What we Europeans call the magical realism, is nothing but acceptance, or at least questioning, an inexplicable element, irreducible to the logic that is part of reality.
The exhibition hosts several iconic images shot by Monica Silva in the last few years, such as "Lux et Filum - a Contemporary Vision of Caravaggio", a work that grants the mention of the Government of the State of Sao Paulo (Brazil) as being “a project of cultural and social relevance that contributes significantly to the diffusion of the baroque painting by Michelangelo Merisi”, created from a simple query: “how Caravaggio’s paintings would be depicted today?”
Andrea Dusio describes Caravaggio's reinterpretation as follows: "[Monica's photographs] are immediately influenced by some of Merisi's most famous works, but mostly preserving the composition and setting, the framing and shape, radically renewing the depiction, and by doing so, she avoids the cliché followed slavishly by many photographers when they try to measure with the realistic paintings of the Lombard painter ”.
"Decisive, for Monica Silva, is the reference to the history of art - says Vincenzo Trione, art critic and historian - visiting museums, looking back to some masterpieces of the history of art. The Brazilian photographer does not aspire to split bridges or connections: for her, an image must disclose unexplored paths within the recesses of memory. She aims to give a cultural background to every poetic sparkle. She glimpses particularly at the opulent craftiness of the Baroque, using gloss and polish. A photograph, for her, is not a fancy invention, nor a skill to mold the null. It's the opposite, it is a renovation of consolidated ground in our heritage."
The exhibition at the MAC space, however, does not only includes works from the "Lux et filum" project but also includes works like "Banana Golden Pop Art", the iconic image of Andy Warhol, a playful tribute to the aesthetics to the father of the Pop Art, and of the inedited photographs "Golden Sexy Fruit Series", where “the iconographic references are a mere inspiration for a paradoxical desecration accomplished by coating fresh fruits with gold paint, with an overwhelming allusion to the sexual metaphor that has belonged to the genre since ancient times. Once again, if photography often wearily insists on a pleonastic exercise probing in hyperrealism that is inherent to the medium, Monica practices a sort of hyper-anti-naturalism. The golden fruits series are above all thoughts, provocations, audacious icons ", says the exhibition's curator.
Dusio carries on: “Monica Silva's photographs explore the pop style language and the advertising glitter as a assuring chromatic / traditional device, that nourishes the abstracted eye, for which her work can be assimilated to David La Chapelle's exuberance, and she does so, however, to open, I believe consciously, a sort of vision on the contemplation on what her pictures really withhold and what is mostly invisible to the eyes. Monica's imagery is indeed an extremely personal form of magical realism.”
Like the whole Pop Art tendency, also "Coca Cola Series" is a fun tribute to Warhol's aesthetics that Andrea Dusio describes as follows: “the series is a provocative interpretation of the icon and the brand that subvert the division between the main areas of the exhibition. It is in fact, a thematic and compositional variation that are preserved from decontexting the product on which the historical query of Pop Art is based.”
Lastly the artist's famous portraits in display: "Her portraits help the person in front of the camera to bring out something that often they are not entirely ready to show. And this is furthermore true as the subject is female, because through the face and body, the Brazilian photographer always tells part of her own story, an individual truth that is shared with those who are in front of her lens, an empathic attitude that she identifies and feels to belong to all women" ends Andrea Dusio.
Writings in the catalog: Gillo Dorfles, Gianluigi Colin, Vincenzo Trione, Roberto Muti, Angelo Bolzani, Denis Curti.
Main Sponsor: Cepim - Interporto di Parma in collaboration with Maimeri Foundation; Technical Sponsor: Canson Infinity; Studio Bolzani;
Cultural sponsorship: Consulate General of Brazil; The municipality of Milan;
Representative gallery: Paola Colombari Gallery; www.artnet.com/galleries/galleria-paola-colombari/html
Press Office: Seigradi, Barbara La Malfa
