21st November 2015 – 9th January 2016
Spazio Testoni
Via Azeglio 50, Bologna
www.spaziotestoni.it
Alan Maglio and Fabio Giampietro are two artists from Milan who have chosen different ways of their artistic expression. Alan Maglio uses photography and video for portraits and more or less documentary representations. Normally his works are colourful. Whereas Fabio Giampietro is a painter. His dizzying skyscraper views in bird’s eye perspective and utopian urban landscapes are mostly monochrome. Humans are rarely represented.
Nevertheless their common exhibition “Linea Rossa” witness a harmonious collaboration. The show at the Spazio Testoni in Bologna takes its departing point from Giampietro’s painting of the Milan Central Station (Milano Centrale) and Maglio’s black and white portrait series of Eritrean immigrants in Italy. In “Milano Centrale” Giampietro introduces red colour traces which add people to the station square. Could it be Maglio’s Eritrean immigrants, knowing that the word “Eritrea” comes from the Greek “erythros” which means red? Are they hinting to the metamorphosis of the urban and social landscape due to a new cultural identity as result of a multicultural integration?
In the next room the approximation of the artist is even more intense: in the painting of a city there are faces growing out of the buildings and the photographed portraits float over city impressions. Even though the authorship of the individual artist is evident, they got to a greatest possible rapprochement.
Adjacently Maglio and Giampietro approach the city of Bologna. The painter shows two views to the historical city centre: the “Due Torri” (two medieval genus towers, a landmark of Bologna). His typical bird’s eye perspective is even more dizzying, because the two towers are leaning. Like in “Milano Centrale” the people on the streets are red traces. Moreover a red line on the wall guides us to a selection of Polaroid’s, shot in Bologna. We see streets and shops, people in bars, other Bolognese landmarks and, of course, the “Due Torri”.
The exhibition finds its finale in a small photo studio. During the opening Alan Maglio took portraits of the visitors in this room. Already on the walls are red cords with some more Eritrean immigrant photos. They will be mixed with the visitor portraits as a symbol for integration.
