Shadow Collection – Municipality of Palermo

“Collected shadow” is inspired by a verse from Valerio Magrelli’s poem “There is silence between one page and another” (Aequator lentisin Ora serrata retinae, 1980), which helps us to describe and talk about the work carried out by the two artists on display. On the one hand, the reference to the shadow, and therefore to another image of a body, (a vision) reproduced, brought back to another surface thanks to a light source positioned opposite to it. Therefore an idea of ​​an image that changes and transforms, modeled with the movement of light as is the creative act of the artist. On the other hand, the collection and the allusion to the gesture of taking with the hands, to a delicate manual action that makes one think of the need to surround oneself with certain structures, or the desire to collect a set of elements by placing them close to each other, sometimes overlapping, to establish new relationships, experiment (attempting) new forms of dialogue. A desire for collection that the two artists explore both for study reasons and by instinct or vocation. In both works emerges a delicate study of forms in the space of representation, intimate configurations to be “observed” in silence and slowly, to recover their archetypal flavour. The body of work brings us before an atlas of images, in which we can get lost and, perhaps, find ourselves, each carrying a story of its own, a lived experience, often unexpected and therefore surprising and unique.

Light idols that detach themselves from the background of similarity, the images are, in Alessandra Calò’s work, a risk of relationship with a completely unexpected other, a gaze that is crossed by flashes and shadows to project images as light as fairy tales.

The collection of the shadow, as if the shadow were a possible collection of lost bodies, is the logic that runs through Rossella Palazzolo’s work.

Both ways of proceeding address the theme of the shadow that comes from the opacity of a vegetal body, fragile or sharp, concrete or desired, but with symmetrical paths. In Alessandra Calò’s work the projected shadow becomes a glow that meets the opaque light of hands and caring gestures, in that of Rossella Palazzolo the collected shadow acquires body and space.

In the first case it is the bodies that speak with their emanation, in the second it is the emanation of a body no longer visible that becomes a new body. Once again, perhaps, we are in the presence of the founding myths of the image, that of Narcissus and that of Butade.

The event is sponsored by the Municipality of Palermo.

The exhibition can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday from 4.00pm to 7.30pm and upon reservation by writing to [email protected]

Duration: 27 APRIL – 27 JUNE 2024

Entrance: Free

Alessandra Calò (Italy, 1977) artist and photographer, since the beginning of her career she has experimented with the use of new languages ​​that allow her to delve into issues related to memory, identity and the language of photography itself. Her research is characterized by the reappropriation and reinterpretation of archive materials through ancient off-camera printing techniques.

Rossella Palazzolo (Palermo, 1983) is a designer and artist from Palermo. As a designer you founded the project Kepha study for which he creates interior design objects and which is based on the search for a balance between concrete and the natural forms from which he draws inspiration. As an artist you deepen this research, analyzing and using transfer techniques in which you condense formal aspects of painting, photography and sculpture.

Vito Chiaramonte (Castelvetrano, 1973) is a PhD in Art History, teacher and educational coordinator. An independent curator, he has published essays dedicated to southern painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to research in the field of protection and the history of restoration. His fields of interest range from image didactics to iconology, from the science of images to psychoanalysis. As a curator he investigates the possibility of intersecting contemporary production with the themes of individual and collective memory.

Martina Martire (Palermo, 1987) is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Heritage at the University of Palermo. She is co-founder of the MARTHA-Music ART House Academy project, she trained at various museum and cultural institutes by participating in numerous exhibition and theatrical events. She has dedicated herself to curating contemporary art exhibitions from 2018 to today. Among the areas of study she explores the sector of photographic archives of Art History.