Luigi Ghirri Fund

I edition

Paesaggi d’aria Luigi Ghirri and Yona Friedman/Jean-Baptiste Decavèle

curated by Chiara Bertola and Giuliano Sergio

November 21st 2015 > February 21st 2016    

The first act of a research program connected to the “Ghirri Fund”, recently created at Querini Stampalia thanks to the passion and kindness of collector Roberto Lombardi.

A project curated by Chiara Bertola and Giuliano Sergio in collaboration with Livio Felluga and RAM radioartemobile.  

The interaction between photographer Luigi Ghirri and Friedman/Decavèle duo occurs in a common context of many art studies after the Second World War: the need is to demolish a perception of works and places structured by means of frames, showcases, pedestals and architectures, and to subvert the distinction between the object and its containers, the building and the environment.  

According to this interpretation, “Paesaggi d’aria” suggests thinking over the work of the two most original innovators of photography and architecture.   

The Italian landscape is in the middle of this debate, a field where both authors build their point of view, each one in his own way, going beyond that tourist convention stuck into the established idea of heritage and museum, that photography and architecture can subvert.  

Hence the idea of comparing Luigi Ghirri’s shots to the aerial and free landscape museum, conceived inside Livio Felluga’s vineyards by the visionary genius of Friedman/Decavèle duo, through the documentary “Livio Felluga 100” (2014) made by the photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Luigi Vitale, who tells the reason of the “Vigne Museum” birth and its building phases.   

Imagined as a meeting and observation place, it examines the area and its landscape. Since the structure is deeply-rooted and does not have walls, it provides a cause for meditation on the concept of museum and on its current function for contemporary art and for architecture.  

Luigi Ghirri looks for a balance point with his framing, leaving the formal expedients in order to combine the experience and memory of gaze. It is not only about understanding the place and showing its aura, but also about living it and being able to read it when the sun shines and under the light of the night, and about considering it as a point of view from where it is possible to look at the landscape through windows and portals.  

Yona Friedman and Jean-Baptiste Decavèle imagine the museum, especially the “Vigne Museum”, as an open structure, an instrument integrated in the area, which overturns its function, addressing it outward. The museum loses its walls, and becomes an insubstantial monument, a goal to reach. The work-object disappears together with its container: the museum itself is a frame, which teaches the gaze and allows to find the “works” again among buildings and squares, glimpses of towns and countryside, and to identify them in the folds of history, like Luigi Ghirri’s pictures do.  

The exhibition was the result of the collaboration between the Querini Stampalia Foundation, Livio Felluga and RAM radioartemobile.  

On 20th November the Querini Stampalia Foundation invited the public to a round table to offer a critical review of the exhibition. Guests: Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, artist; Angelo Maggi, professor of the IUAV University of Venice; Chiara Parisi, director of “La Monnaie” of Paris Cultural Programs, and Elena Re, art critic.   

The proceedings of the round table have been published in the Quaderno n.1 of the Luigi Ghirri Fund by the publisher Corraini.          

Images of the exhibition