From the discovery of photography as a means to make art and the technological subconscience of the medium, up to provoking situations that lead the public to take an active part in the creation of the artworks: The creative career of Franco Vaccari ranges between these two extremes. A reference point in the world of contemporary art ever since his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1972, he is now the protagonist in his home town of an important retrospective entitled: Franco Vaccari. Opere 1955/1975.
Curated by Luca Panaro and Roberta Russo, organised and produced by the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini di Modena, by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, the exhibition is housed in two different venues - the Palazzina dei Giardini, corso Canalgrande, and the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, 160 Via Giardini, both in Modena, where it will be inaugurated on Sunday 2nd December 2007 respectively at 11.30am and 12.30pm.
What's more, the retrospective also presents a number of unseen works which call for a share of spectator participation and which tell the story of a curious and multi-faceted artist, far from the limitations of collective movements and a great anticipator of relational aesthetics, now so widely talked about, with his focus firmly placed on work/audience interaction.
Palazzina dei Giardini, corso Canalgrande, Modena
The first stage of this journey/exhibition is a meeting with the new, with an "exhibition in real time" (an expression coined by Vaccari himself) especially created for the Modenese show: number 37 entitled: C'ero anch'io 2007. A photo booth at the entrance to Palazzina dei Giardini shoots a strip of photos for anyone who wants one, complete with all the elements (event, place, date) which serve to contextualise the shots and thus certify a moment of existence. "Photography - as Vaccari writes - may be seen as a form of prosthesis applied to aid our memories just when our sense of self, in the era of globalisation, starts to lose consistency".
This work is to be found in the centre of the exhibition set up in the Palazzina dei Giardini. The left wing of the ancient ducal hothouse, on the other hand, hosts his debut works, the corpus of previously unseen works entitled Radici (Roots) dating to between 1955 and 1965.
Several dozen snapshots that document the city, its inhabitants, its rituals; a series of flashes (each photograph is illuminated only when a spectator passes by) which Vaccari uses as screens against which to set the experiences of others, having realised soon on in his career just how photography is not a faithful reflection of reality, but how it possesses a capacity for recording and perceiving which is far greater than that of the eye, as if doted with a kind of "technological subconscience" to use a definition given by the artist himself.
A few years after the last shots of Radici (Roots), Franco Vaccari started to refuse the point of view typical of those who create photographic images: between 1967 and 1968 he shot the series La città vista a livello di cane (The town vieded from a dog's eye level) with which his career developed. "Among the countless automatisms that come into play when you take a photo - the artist explains - there is also that of taking all the shots from human height. In order to shake off this habit, I wanted to identify with dogs in order to try and see things from their point of view, and so I lowered the camera from the usual 170cm to 50cm".
Animals feature once more in the short film I cani lenti (Slow dogs) in which a number of stray dogs are filmed in slo-mo, an approach that shows the interaction between the movie camera and the animals that sense they are being observed. From the travels of the memory to Trip lucido (Lucid trip), exhibition in real-time No. 12, one of Vaccari's historical works produced in the tower of Graz in 1975 is "reinstalled" here especially for the occasion.
Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, 160 Via Giardini, Modena
And it is from here that the visitors will set out on a real journey to the other display venue, the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, where there will be three videos waiting for them: Nei sotterranei (In the cellars), Ventoscopio (Windoscope) and Piloro (Pilorus). More unseen material makes up another corpus of photography entitled Isola di Wight (Isle of Wight),1970. A very particular and innovative reportage due to the fact that once more, Franco Vaccari wanted the automatic capacity of the photographic medium to prevail in recording the behavioural dynamics rather than the artist's conditioning. "When after a night spent sleeping rough I set out to document the awakening of the camped-out sleeping festival-goers - writes Vaccari - I realised that I belonged to a culture that had nothing to do with that of the event I was taking part in. And so in order to free myself of my mental conditionings, I decided to get around them through the use of an automatism: I decided to take one photo to the left and one to the right every 100 metres."
Still largely unpublished, the works that tell the story of a number of Franco Vaccari's minimal journeys, such as Viaggio+Rito (Journey + Rite), exhibition in real-time No. 2, which - with the help of two Polaroid-touting photographers - documents every moment of Franco Vaccari's journey from Modena train station up to his arrival at the Galleria 2000 in Bologna, where the artist starts to put up the photos of his journey as well as that of the arrival of the visitors as they start to come in. "Those who came to have a look were immediately incorporated, multiplied, recorded, captured in unrepeatable instants, and this destroyed the contemplation space only to open up that of action". Another minimal journey is Omaggio all'Ariosto (Homage to Ariosto), in which Vaccari sets off for Ferrara to the exhibition of the same name dedicated to the poet, following the same path walked along by the poet from Carpi to Ferrara, taking Polaroid snapshots, gluing them onto the postcards of the towns he passes through and posting them to Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara.
The exhibition is accompanied by the book "FRANCO VACCARI. Fotografie 1955/1975" published by Baldini Castoldi Dalai (Milan, 2007). The book is a volume of 176 pages featuring some 245 photographic images, texts in both Italian and English, with contributions by Angela Madesani, by the exhibition curators as well as by Angela Vettese.
Franco Vaccari. Opere 1955/1975
cured by Luca Panaro and Roberta Russo
December 2nd 2007 - February 17th 2008
Free Entrance
Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini, via Giardini 160, Modena
Timetable: Mon 3,00pm-5,00pm; Tue-Fri 9,30am-12,00am; 3,00pm-5,00pm
Sat and Sun 10,00am-1,00pm; 3,00pm-7,00pm
December 25th/26th, January 1st 3,00pm-6,00pm
Info: ph. +39 059 224418 - info@fotomuseo.it
Galleria Civica di Modena, Palazzina dei Giardini, corso Canalgrande, Modena
Timetable: Tue-Fri 10,30am-1,00pm; 3,00pm-6,00pm; Sat and Sun 10,30am-6,00pm; December 25th/26th and January 1st 3.00pm-6.00pm
On Monday closed
Info: tel. +39 059.2032911/2032940 - www.comune.modena.it/galleria