From 24th July 2021 at 6.00 pm we are pleased to present the first personal exhibition of STEFANO TASSI at the Gallery in Montalcino, entitled “CITTA ‘ANEMICHE”.
It will be possible to visit the exhibition until 15 August – either by appointment by calling the number 338 – 4520080 – and during the normal opening hours of the Gallery, with the obligation to use the mask and respect the spacing.
As known, blood anemia is a condition in which the number of red blood cells is not sufficient to carry enough oxygen to meet the needs of the body’s organs and tissues.
In Stefano Tassi opinion, concerning photography, those red blood cells are represented by a fundamental chemical element: silver nitrate, sensitive to photons that affect both the film and the printing paper.
In analog printing photographic papers, left for years exposed to humidity and natural light, the silver nitrate partially evaporates, so that the photons are no longer able to impress the image on the paper effectively and correctly.
It is this lack that the author defines as “anemic photography”.
In this exhibition you will therefore find a series of digital photographs, printed on old analog papers, which reacted unpredictably and randomly through the different ink jets, generating different shades of color, based on the amount of nitrates still present on the surfaces to impress.
The same photographs were subsequently worked by Tassi with pictorial interventions and material additions.
In this way, a rare alchemy has been created between gesture, paper and color which transformed the images into real pictorial objects of poetic narrative quality and extraordinary chromatic power.
Most of the exhibited works have as their subject city views taken by the author on the computer through web cams situated all over the world at 11.30 am, during the days of the first italian lockdown (due to Covid-19 pandemic).
Next to the initial small-format photographs you will also find some enlargements of the same, also hand-retouched by the author with various mixed painting techniques, capable of varying, once again, the initial reference paradigm and always transforming into something different and fascinating.
Matteo Scuffiotti
