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Matinee: 'Vittoria Gerardi's Latenza'
30 March 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 546th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Vittoria Gerardi's Latenza.
This 5:33 video from the Bigaignon gallery in Paris features the work of Vittoria Gerardi on exhibit there through April 20.
Gerardi takes an unusual (one might say "reverse") path to her print, starting from the unexposed emulsion and leaving the photographic image unfixed to change with exposure, a process retarded only by enclosing the print in a box. She calls it Alethegraphy.
The liner notes from the gallery explain it quite well:
Latenza, Italian artist Vittoria Gerardi's third solo show at the gallery, places light at the heart of her work, pushes back the boundaries of the photographic medium and is a remarkable hymn to life. In this new work, Vittoria Gerardi attempts to understand the language of photography, its submerged structure, its hidden face. She explores the concept of the latent image that lies within each print even before it is revealed and seeks to uncover the boundary that separates the visible from the invisible.
By transforming light into a chemical reaction, photography becomes photosynthesis, just as happens in the plant world. By associating plants with the concept of the latent image, Vittoria Gerardi explores our relationship with life. By choosing not to fix her prints, Vittoria Gerardi's photographic paper literally develops as it is exposed. It's as if the work itself is maturing, mimicking a process of growth, expressing both origin and becoming.
Thus, because they remain sensitive to light, the prints, preserved in magnificent sealed frame-boxes, will continue to change color progressively, adapting to the elements before settling naturally into their "final" composition. These boxes are an integral part of the work. They are adorned with enamelled copper plates whose color varies from one to the other. On the outside, the enamel is a monochrome glass that follows the sequence of Newton's sphere; on the inside, the glass and copper work the artist has made reveals relevant dendritic roots.
In addition to this unique and astonishing series, the artist has created a series of bronze sculptures known as Gliommeri, which take the form of intertwined filaments, echoing the idea of an entangled world as presented by Goethe in "The Metamorphosis of Plants," a world represented by a line whose beginning and end merge, symbolizing eternity.
It's an ingenious process, fascinating to watch as she creates an image. Or perhaps we should say "resurrects" an image from the tomb of the invisible.