Magnum Gallery Paris presents Alec Soth, an exhibition that features work reaching from Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), the artist’s first monograph, to his latest, I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (2019).
•
Beatrice Lezzi
Artist / Photographer
I’m focused on a work that began with my BA thesis, in which the centre point is the figure of Venus. I took her as a metaphoric symbol of both sublimation and oppression that concerns woman as a body, a presence and an image in the world. Everything unfolds in the continuous asking of conflicting questions: Venus as a saint or a whore, Venus as a dead symbol or as something that needs to resurrect. Is our body something sacred or obscene? Who decides? Where does boundaries stand? I don’t give answers, but a space of impressions, in which the eye is led to multiple layers and the mind can make its own conclusions.
•
My personal work speaks mostly about the inner and hidden feelings inside me.
I think that it is impossible to separate how I feel from what I represent in my images.
When I was younger I used to draw a lot and create things. I’ve always felt an urge to express myself. Later on, growing up, this urge was shifted on photography. Like most of the teenage girls, I was insecure about myself, my body and my face. It was such a struggle standing the gaze, anyone’s gaze. And I also couldn’t stand the view of myself from the outside.
But then, mostly during the Academy studies, I started putting myself both behind and in front of the camera. I became the subject of my own photographs, and so of my own gaze. I tried to look at myself without any construction, any social construction on me as a woman, as a body.
Although my work literally contains all of me, my body and my feelings, I’m willing to step forward and speak about a general condition of discomfort in a society that puts lots of pressure on women and their images.
Another important issue in my work is love. Or rather, what we call “love” but which contains a much broader set of sensations. Being in a relationship causes me lots of different ways of feeling. To stand them, I need to understand them. And I try to do that through images and words.
I need to understand how bodies and skin can be bonded, and how bodies suffer the distance from each other. And also I feel really curious about the relationship between a man and his vulnerable intimate naked image reflected in the photographic form.
Nude occurs a lot in my work, not much as an erotic symbol, but more as a primordial way to communicate. Sometimes it becomes a provocation but again, not a provocative wink to the spectator, instead more a “declaration of possession” that allows me to represent myself as I want.
RELATED ARTICLES
-
A Borderless Reality / Carlos GaraicoaOct 4, 2019 – Feb 2, 2020
Carlos Garaicoa investigates how the city and its architecture reflect and influence society. Havana’s abandoned construction projects and the lost dreams they represent are at the core of his meditations.
-
The Post-War DreamJourney into the Anthropocene
In the late summer of 2016, I spent six weeks in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region where I documented the transformation of some of the most influential cities in the region: Ordos, Hohhot, and Baotou. While looking back on the images I had taken, I was unexpectedly reminded of post-war Italian cinema (more…)
-
Civilization The Way We Live NowSep 13, 2019 – Feb 2, 2020
An international photography exhibition of monumental scale, featuring over 200 original photographs by over 100 contemporary photographers from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe.
-
Bruce Conner: BreakawayNov 26, 2019 – Feb 22, 2020
Following presentations of Bruce Conner’s films such as Crossroads (1976) in June 2015, A Movie (1958) in May 2017, and Easter Morning (2008) in Naples, January 2018, Thomas Dane Gallery introduces Breakaway (1966) (more…)
-
On the Peripheryby Sinziana Velicescu
Sinziana Velicescu’s work is a minimalist and abstract approach, a modern chronicling of a quiet land surveyor, completely separated of sentimentality. The publication of her series is a documentation of time, bracketed in images of framed surfaces of space.
-
Thomas StruthOct 2, 2019 – Jan 19, 2020
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is presenting the exhibition entitled Thomas Struth, a complete journey through five decades of one of the most influential European post-war photographers (more…)
-
So British! Collection PinaultJun 5, 2019 – May 11, 2020
Since its creation 30 years ago, the Pinault collection has grown quickly to become a major presence in the contemporary arts. This exhibition focuses on the British artists present in the collection. Artists include Nigel Cooke, Jonathan Wateridge, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Toby Ziegler, among others.
-
Submit to ARTPILYear Round / International
ARTPIL is accepting submissions of Profiles, Articles, and Announcements. With a focus on modern + contemporary arts, ARTPIL provides stories, event news, interviews featuring profiles of artists of all disciplines, museums & galleries, agencies & organizations, both curated and from the public domain. (more…)
