A present with an ancient face, the hybridization of disciplines, the memory that modifies the memory. Piero Gemelli, The beauty revealed. Photographs and imagined stories is something more than an exhibition, a journey into a construction of reality that is difficult to categorize. The exhibition will be held at the Pan, the Palazzo delle Arti in Naples from 10 October to 10 November 2021, and will be the first time that the Neapolitan city hosts the works of one of the most successful Italian photographers, a complete artist who escapes any categorization. .
The exhibition, curated by Maria Sanavese with Maria Vittoria Baravelli, in collaboration with the Department of Education, Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Naples, will host 100 works by Piero Gemelli, including photographs, drawings and wire sculptures , strictly in non-chronological order, to allow the thematic rather than temporal aspect to be dealt with in the best possible way, and to better appreciate the research that lies behind each single work.
Piero Gemelli is an artist who escapes any type of label: he was born an architect, then moved to Milan and began a career as a photographer, collaborating with magazines such as Vogue Italia and Condé Nast, as well as curating the advertising campaigns of brands. such as Gucci, Ferré, Tiffany, and many others.
The architect’s roots are clearly present in each of his works, which are not mere snapshots of reality, but go beyond, to create a new one. As Gemelli himself admits: «I don’t steal the moment, I don’t photograph what happens to him, but what I would like to happen».
The goal of the curator Maria Savarese is to bring the user into the intimacy of this multifaceted and innovative artist. “Every single room was ordered in a narrative succession with a theme that allowed the visitor to make a real crossing into the artist’s most intimate and personal universe, in a sort of permanent assimilation, in which the invitation was not to look only at the works, but to look for the author within them, tracing him, therefore, in his work ».
An “iconographic biography”, to better understand the cultural significance of an artist like Pietro Gemelli.