Categoria: English

Selling Dreams

Photography by Virginia Ryan

curated by Manuela De Leonardis

Rome 2-23 July 2020

The artist will be present on the 2nd July from 7-10pm

Please note: as containment against the spread of  COVID-19, in order to respect social distancing regulations , entry into the gallery will be restricted to a set number at any time.
The wearing of a mask is obligatory.

Gallery Director Giovanna Pennacchi is pleased to present the one-woman exhibition  Selling Dreams by artist Virginia Ryan, curated by  Manuela De Leonardis.

Selling Dreams is a semantic mapping  of socio-urban reality in West Africa , through images of the vibrant publicity billboards set in the day-to-day city landscape, inviting the viewer  to critical reflection.
Contradicition is implicit in the very nature of the post colonial architecture of many  private and public buildings foto-documented by Virginia Ryan in 2011 and  2012.
“Today these buildings  might appear stressed and tired to me’’ observes the artist. “Not only for the wear-and-tear of passing time, but for the intense weathering brought on by a moist environment: rain, sun, sand, are agents of aggression creating damage and mould. But there is another way of looking, which expresses Hope, through paying attention to  the skins of these edifices in rapport with the glamorous billboards adorning them for a  maximum of six months before being taken down, to be endlessly substituted with new dreams’’.
In these large tableau, ambition and dreams are invested with happiness and faith : from soccer to performative religious ministry, from beauty products to the newest communication technology devices , from cars to political personalities, fashion and cinema, and of course, food.
Synthesising  most explicitly the extraordinary messages in the array of social display , appears the imposing figure of the Mother par excellence: Madame Maggi : there she is, larger than life, the smiling queen of soup cubes who invites the public to taste her broth , appealing to the city’s female populace with the motto  “Chaque Femme est une Etoile”(Every Woman Is A Star).

(Manuela De Leonardis)

Selected Selling Dreams (2011-2012) – photographic images printed on canvas with acrylic paint – have been viewed at Galerie Cècile Fakhoury (Abidjan, 2014), 1-54 African Art Fair Somerset House (London, 2014), Contemporaneo, FotoGrafia – International Festival of Rome , Doozo (Rome, 2015), Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary (Trevi, 2017), Janet Clayton Gallery ‘Head On International Photography Festival’ (Sydney, 2018).

Virginia Ryan, Australian multidisciplinary artist  with Italian citizenship, lives and works  in Italy and Australia. She is a graduate of the National Art School of Art and Design, Australia and post-graduate School of Art Therapy in Edinburgh,Scotland.
Her studio is found in Trevi,Umbria .
Ryan has lived and worked in Canberra, in Alexandria,Egypt (1982-1985), Curitiba in Brasil (1988-1990), Serbia (1990-1992), Scotland (1992-1995), Accra in Ghana (2001-2007) before reloacting to Abidjan e Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast until early 2016.  Collaborations have included with musicians and anthropologists
In 2004 she co-founded the ongoing Foundation for Contemporary Art (FCA) in Ghana, where she was the first director and in  2016 Make Art Not Walls Italia with asylum seekers in Umbria.
Her practise explores identity and memory, often employing  abandoned /found objects or cultural refuse. She has been invited tothe Biennals of Malindi, Dakar, and Venice and in  2019 the the  Museo Oscar Niemeyer in Curitiba for the Biennale Fronteiras Abertas. In Italy she has partecipated in the Bienals of Fiber Art and Artist Books, the  51 ° International Festival of two Worlds in Spoleto, the Whitworth in Manchester, Museo Pino Pascali in Polignano a Mare and Extramoenia_IntraArt in Puglia,  Dovecoat Studios, Scotland and Montoro12 Gallery, Rome. In 2017 the solo show Virginia Ryan Biografia Plurale at Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary was followed by the publication of the book Biografia Plurale. Virginia Ryan: Art, Africa e Elsewhere (Fabrizio Fabbri Editore) with  essays by I. Bargna, S. Feld, M. Coccia, M. De Leonardis e Osei Bonsu. In 2018 she was nominated Accademica Benemerita  by the Accademia Pietro Vannucci in Perugia. In late Spring 2020, after an extended art residence in Australia, she returned to Italy and continues her research within the local community at her place of residence,Trevi concentrating on the female position after  COVID-19, and other work-in-progress concerning cultural and relational aspects between West Africa and Italy.

From 2 -23 July 2020

ACTA INTERNATIONAL

Director: Giovanna Pennacchi
via Panisperna, 82-83 – 00184 Rome
Thursday-Friday-Saturday  7-10pm
info@actainternational.it
www.actainternational.it

Giovanna Pennacchi is delighted to present the exhibition

Manos, I contadini del mondo

Photographs by Marco Del Comune e Oliver Migliore

 Manuela De Leonardis, curator

   6-27 febbraio 2020

 inaugurazione alla presenza degli autori

giovedì 6 febbraio alle ore 18.30-20.30

Manos-Farmers of the World, is a photographic project that deals with the richness of biodiversity and foods at risk of extinction, such as the wild dates of Mali, the Brazilian Dendé oil, the Rowan Apples of Kazakistan, and the Secoya corn of Ecuador. It’s a project narrated through the hands of people from all over the world; hands that take care of and foster the cultivation of special produce; farmers’ hands marked by heavy furrows like the land they cultivate. The purpose of this exhibition is to accompany its viewers toward the discovery of unique, unusual, refined elements, reawakening a sometimes somnolent curiosity. Marco’s and Oliver’s color photographs suggest flavors and nuances that are unique forms, matchless for their beauty of variety

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Biografie

Marco Del Comune (Milano 1960, vive e lavora tra il Lago Maggiore e Milano) inizia a fotografare nel 1985, dopo un’esperienza come assistente con Enzo Nocera e Edward Rozzo. Si specializza nella fotografia pubblicitaria realizzando campagne per Alessi, Acqua di Parma, Lagostina, Bassetti. Dal 2001 si occupa di ritratti e reportage collegati all’alimentazione realizzando per Slow Food servizi in America Latina, Asia e sulle comunità del cibo di Terra Madre. I suoi lavori sono pubblicati sul Venerdì di Repubblica, Viaggi e Sapori, Vie del Gusto, Brava Casa e il Gambero Rosso. Nel 2014 inizia una collaborazione con Oliver Migliore, per i progetti di Terra Madre e Slow food, che si basa sul confronto di due sguardi diversi per raccontare storie di cibo e persone. Dal 2015 collabora con artisti contemporanei, tra cui Silvia Levenson, Anne Karin Furunes, Francesca Gagliardi, Pierluigi Pusole e Walter Visentin realizzando cataloghi e documentando le installazioni delle mostre. Nel 2016, insieme alla critica d’arte Beba Marsano, segue il cuoco Gualtiero Marchesi nei sette itinerari lombardi tra cibo e cultura da cui nasce il libro Sapore in Lombardia, viaggio con Gualtiero Marchesi. Nel 2019 con l’artista Silvia Levenson realizza a Berlino e Birmingham dei progetti con gli immigrati e i rifugiati sul tema dell’integrazione.

Oliver Migliore (Baden, Svizzera 1970, vive e lavora a Cuneo) inizia la carriera di fotografo agli inizi degli anni ‘90, con la pellicola e l’alchimia della stampa manuale in camera oscura. Per gran parte di quel decennio organizza viaggi in Asia, da sempre attirato da culture diverse e luoghi remoti. La passione per la fotografia e il viaggio vanno di pari passo, alimentandosi a vicenda. Un’affinità elettiva che si riflette nel suo lavoro fotografico, fra reportage e fotografia creativa, realtà e invenzione, che l’autore definisce “fotografia etnocentrica”. Negli anni Duemila inizia a collaborare con Slow Food realizzando reportage e articoli prevalentemente nel sud del mondo: America Latina, Africa, Asia. Fotografare è anche una via per incontrare “l’altro” in modo intimo con autenticità, profondità e intensità.

direzione: Giovanna Pennacchi

06 474 2005

via Panisperna, 82-83 – 00184 Roma

dal martedì al sabato ore 15,30 – 19.30

info@actainternational.it

www.actainternational.it       

          

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   Con il patrocinio di:

Giovanna Pennacchi is delighted to present the exhibition

DARKROOM

Photographs by Marcello Di Donato

Elena Pinchiurri, curator

11 – 31 Gennaio2020

Inaugurazione 11 Gennaio ore 18,30

Ancora una volta Di Donato porta all’estremo il medium della fotografia, declinandolo nelle più svariate e ardite accezioni. Con un personale approccio, semplice ma potente, l’artista sperimenta il procedimento di acquisizione digitale delle immagini in relazione al processo cromogenico, proprio invece della fotografia analogica. Il suo progetto vuole infatti essere un omaggio a quest’ultima, ad un concetto più esteso di “classicità” insito nella stessa e che ritrova il suo rimando tematico, il suo eco, proprio nella scelta dei soggetti, che infatti sono opere classiche e museali (nel caso specifico scatti realizzati alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea e a Palazzo Braschi, Roma).

Impiegando un dispositivo digitale di ultima generazione (un iPhone, emblema per eccellenza della società odierna), Di Donato fotografa opere d’arte in gallerie e musei, luoghi per antonomasia detentori di cultura e tradizione, per poi stampare queste immagini digitali, mediante processo chimico come per la fotografia analogica. Si crea quindi così, un cortocircuito semantico e, contestualmente, una nuova forma di dialogo tra fotografia digitale ed analogica.

Concettualmente l’artista ha scelto un percorso controcorrente, in cui si snodano consapevolezza del passato, tradizione e nuovi mezzi espressivi legati alla contemporaneità. Si realizza in tal modo un progetto di forte impatto e spessore, attuale ma con uno sguardo al passato, che si afferma in un presente rifiutando contrapposizioni manichee tra fotografia digitale ed analogica e offrendo una nuova prospettiva, un punto di fuga.

Elena Pinchiurri

Using a latest generation digital device (an iPhone, the symbol par excellence of today’s world), Di Donato photographs works of art in galleries and museums, places that are quintessentially containers of culture and tradition. Then, he prints these digital images by means of a chemical process as in analog photography. A semantic short circuit along with a new form of dialogue between digital and analog photography get created during this process. Conceptually, the artist has chosen a countercurrent direction, which unleashes awareness of the past, tradition, to new expressive contemporary means. In this way, a project of powerful impact and depth comes to life, current but with a look to the past. This is expressed in the moment by rejecting Manichean juxtapositions between digital and analog photography, offering a new perspective, a vanishing point.

Galleria

ACTA INTERNATIONAL

Direzione: Giovanna Pennacchi

via Panisperna, 82/83

00184 Roma

tel +39 06.47742005

www.actainternational.it

info@actainternational.it

Giovanna Pennacchi is delighted to present the exhibition

LOS ANGELES BOULEVARDS – Photographs by Stephen Hilger

Allan Frame, curator

Acta International

Dal 23 Maggio al 12 Giugno

Inaugurazione alla presenza dell’artista

giovedì 23 Maggio – ore 19,00

My first time in Los Angeles I rode into town in the back of my parents’ station wagon. It was 1958. Touring the West on a family vacation, we had left Las Vegas at dusk, driven through the desert, and arrived in Beverly Hills late at night with a movie star map, spotting the homes of Doris Day, James Stewart, Jack Benny, and then, Fred Astaire. There he was in person, in his garage, getting into his car with a date, then  backing out into the street. He rolled down his window, and hailed my father, who had slowed down to gawk. “Are you lost?” he asked. My father grabbed me and pulled me to the window. “No, we’re not lost, but this is my son. He loves your movies!” Growing up in Missisippi, I was star-struck, enthralled with Hollywood, and much later, captivated by the literature of LA, the noirish novels of James Cain, Horace McCoy, Raymond Chandler, and Nathaniel West that depicted the seedy collapse of the American dream at the Pacific’s edge.

Stephen Hilger, a Brooklyn-based photographer, is a native of Los Angeles, for whom the typical myths of Hollywood glamour and film-noir intrigue have been peeled away to reveal a plain, nondescript place, sometimes lush, and a little run-down, its hints of commuter tedium and income disparity softened by radiant sunlight and bursts of color in unexpected places. Absent are any celebrities or tourists.

 The few figures who appear are laborers, and a homeless man wrapped in something that looks like a body bag, sleeping on a bench that advertises a medical provider. In making this work, Hilger drives “the largest and longest streets from one part of the city to another, stopping along the way to observe the ever-unfolding spectacle that is daily life.” His aim, he says, is “to reveal elements of the complex character of the city of Los Angeles, at once magnificently beautiful and melancholic, anachronistic and mutable.”

Like William Eggleston, Hilger finds the gospel in the random everyday. Color is an integral part of his work, whether it’s the splotch of blue paint on the white sidewall of a cottage, remnants of confetti found in a gutter, the blue of an obsolete telephone booth, or the green of an old newspaper box rhyming with a coral stripe on the curb. With a sense of humor, he depicts vernacular handmade signs, such as the one in front of a mom and pop drug store that promotes “intestinal cleansers” and “cardiovascular support.” For Hilger, the overriding concern is to “illuminate the unseen and unknown moments that dent the Los Angeles metropolis in full.” This is street photography in a place with empty sidewalks and endless boulevards. With an eye for detail and demographics, he manages to make the desolate feel specific, even familiar. Hilger is a photographer whose work traces historical memory in the social landscape. His most recent work, Los Angeles Boulevards, constructs an archive of visual motifs at the intersection of public and private spaces throughout Los Angeles.

 

By Allen Frame

BIOS

 Stephen Hilger has exhibited at venues including Los Angeles Contemporary Art Exhibitions; Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles; the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans; and Transmitter, Brooklyn. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Hilger is the author of the monograph Back of Town (SPQR Editions, 2016), the limited-edition publication BLVD (ROMAN NVMERALS, 2017), and his photographs have appeared in periodicals including New York Magazine and the New York Times. His writing about photography and contemporary art has appeared in Aperture’s PhotoBook Review and BOMB. Hilger received his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Columbia University and was a participant in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. He currently teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he is an Associate Professor in the Photography Department and he is also the Director of Education at the Gordon Parks Foundation.

Hilger was a Pratt Institute School of Art Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome during October 2018. This is his first exhibition in Italy.

Allen Frame is based in New York and represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York where his next solo exhibition will be in June, 2019. He is a winner of the 2017/2018 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and recent work he made while in Rome was presented in the exhibition Innamorato at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, in 2018. His 2013 exhibition Dialogue with Bolaño was presented at the Museum of Art of the Sonora in Hermosillo, Mexico, in 2014. His work has been included extensively in group shows since 1976. Detour, a compilation of  his photographs over a decade, was published by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg in 2001.

He has been the curator of numerous exhibitions, including Darrel Ellis at Art in General, in 1996, and In This Place at Art in General in 2004. In Rome, in 2018, he curated two photo exhibitions at ACTA International, Illusione Persistente and Fuggenti Figure. He is an Adjunct Professor of Photography at Pratt Institute (MFA) and also teaches at the School of Visual Arts (BFA), and the International Center of Photography in New York. He graduated from Harvard University and grew up in Mississippi.

ACTA INTERNATIONAL

Direzione: Giovanna Pennacchi

dal martedì al sabato, ore 16 – 19,30

via Panisperna, 82/83

00184 Roma

tel 064742005

www.actainternational.it

info@actainternational.it

Giovanna Pennacchi è lieta di presentare la mostra

L’Archivio del segno. Đanino Božić e Jack Sal

a cura di Manuela De Leonardis

13 – 30 Aprile 2019

inaugurazione alla presenza degli artisti

sabato 13 aprile, 18.30-20.30

 

L’idea intorno a cui ruota il progetto espositivo è l’esplorazione del concetto di archivio come memoria personale (archivio del sé) e collettiva attraverso un approccio concettuale del segno grafico reiterato. Entrambi gli artisti usano un linguaggio in cui è presente la fotografia.

La mostra è anche un’occasione per festeggiare i 25 anni di attività della galleria, alcuni lavori storici di Jack Sal, artista statunitense che proprio all’Acta International, nel 1996, ha presentato la personale Paper / Negatives e dell’artista croato Đanino Božić che espone per la prima volta in Italia l’installazione Self-Portrait e alcune opere della serie Metals.

(M. De Leonardis)

This exhibition revolves around exploring the concept of the archive as a personal memory (archive of the self) and also collective by means of a conceptual approach of repeating the graphic sign. Both artists use a language in which photography is present.

This exhibition also presents an opportunity to celebrate 25 years of the gallery’s activity, some historical works by Jack Sal, an American artist who presented his one-man show, Paper / Negatives, exactly in 1996 at Acta International Gallery and the Croatian artist Đanino Božić, who is exhibiting his Self-Portrait installation and some works of his Metals series in Italy for the first time.

(M. De Leonardis)

Đanino Božić (Pula, Croazia 1961, vive e lavora tra Novigrad/Cittanova e Labinci). Si è laureato presso la Facoltà Pedagogica di Fiume nel dipartimento di arti visuali. Si ocupa di pittura, scultura, installazioni e deisegno. Dal 1984 espone in mostre personali e collettive in Croazia e all’estero.

Tra le mostre recenti: 2015 – Scultori della Mitteleuropa, Spazio Lazzari, Treviso; 2014 – Rencontre Internationale de Painture Tourves; 33° Sculpture symposium “Terra”, Kikinda (Serbia)¸ 2011- Ph6 Koroška galerija Sloven Gradec; 2010 -2014 – Festival vizualnih umjetnosti Arterija Novigrad; 2009-2010 – Moja zemlja Štaglinec; 2008 – Hrvatski trijenale crteža; 2006 – New Delhi, Contemporay Croatian Art; Mediascape Novigrad – Berlin. Tra i numerosi riconoscimenti che ha ricevuto: Rijeka Biennale of Young Artists 1989; International Exhibition of Drawing 2001; Association of Croatian Artists 2001; III Triennale Croata di Disegno, Zagabria 2002. Nel 2012 è stata la prima monografia dedicate al suo lavoro e nel 2013 la sua scultura Fingers è stata allestita nell’Europa Park di Novigrad (Croazia).

Jack Sal è nato a Waterbury (USA) nel 1954, vive e lavora a New York. Nel 1981 l’International Museum of Photography/George Eastman House di Rochester ospita la sua prima personale in un luogo istituzionale. Nel 1986 realizza il ciclo di affreschi nella settecentesca Cappella Gandini (Santa Maria della Maternità) a Montà, Padova e nel 2006 White/Wash II, monumento permanente per le vittime del pogrom del 1946 a Kielce (Polonia).

Tra le mostre personali recenti: 2018 – Photography & Technology, Roonee 247 fine arts gallery, Tokyo; 2016 – Building/Block, Stal Gallery, Muscat (Oman); 2014 – Ring/Rings/Ring, MAC – Museum of Contemporary Art, Lissone; 2011 – O/Ring/O, Stiftung für Medien Kunst und Philosophie, Berlino; in/line ARTCore Contemporary Gallery, Bari; Action/Re/Action, Palazzo Morelli, Todi; De/Portees, IIC of Osaka and Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University; Jack Sal. Fotogenic Nan Sen, Roonee 247 Gallery, Tokyo; New Works, SoHo Art Gallery, Osaka; De/Portees, IIC New York; De/Portees, Casa della Memoria e della Storia, Roma;  2009 – Re/Vision, ZONE Contemporary Art, New York. Le sue opere fanno parte di numerose collezioni pubbliche, tra cui MOMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ludwig Museum, Köln; Museum moderner Kunst, Wien; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit; International Center of Photography/ICP, New York; Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Kunsthalle, Bielefeld, Bielefeld; Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Roma.

La mostra ha il patrocinio della Repubblica di Croazia – Ministero della Cultura e del Muzej – Museo Lapidarium, Novigrad / Cittanova

ACTA INTERNATIONAL

Direzione: Giovanna Pennacchi

dal martedì al sabato, ore 16 – 19,30

via Panisperna, 82/83

00184 Roma

tel 064742005

www.actainternational.it

info@actainternational.it