PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION
MARIO CRESCI
THE GOLD OF TIME
Sarajevo, National Gallery of Bosnia-Herzegovina
curated by Francesca Fabiani
June 2 – 21 2024
On June 2nd 2024, in Sarajevo the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina will host the photographic exhibition “The gold of time” by Mario Cresci, curated by Francesca Fabiani.
This initiative is the result of collaboration between the Central Institute for Cataloguing and Documentation (ICCD) in Rome and the Italian Embassy in Sarajevo.
«Cultural diplomacy is one of our main areas of intervention, aiming not only to promote the further development of bilateral relations but also to contribute to the processes of national reconciliation. Only culture has the capacity to unite the different components of Bosnian-Herzegovinian society, beyond political, ethnic, or religious distinctions», stated Ambassador Marco Di Ruzza.
This exhibition presents the outcome of Mario Cresci artist’s residency experience within the ICCD/Artists in Residence program that involves a master of photography who engages with the institute’s historical collections. Reactivating the layered meanings of the historical photographs preserved at ICCD is one of most fruitful mode to awake the substantial archives (over 6 million photographic types) by recontextualizing them in the contemporary world through an author’s perspective.
«Reality is not what we see but rather what we feel over time, and our feelings change with the frequency and intensity of our experiences along with the way we see and think about the world», explains Mario Cresci.
For this new venue in Sarajevo, 21 playful and surprising black and white prints are presented, as a result of the artist’s encounter with two photographic funds: the portraits fin de siècle of Mario Nunes Vais and a series of photographs of classical statues. The recurring theme is the representation of the human figure, identified as the central issue of his research. Through Cresci’s interrogative gaze, these figures become pretexts for a series of visual experiments obtained by reworking, isolating and reiterating some details of the original photographs, always respecting the original author’s vision.
As curator Francesca Fabiani explains: «Cresci’s approach to photography is comprehensive: his interest in the author, history, technique, subject, and photographic object is combined with his view of photography as a language of signs, visual grammar, and perceptual experience. Cresci has always conceived photography as an expressive form integrated with contemporary arts, focusing his research on the critical and self-reflective investigation of the photographic language. However, this approach has never distracted him from engaging with daily life and questioning the role of the artist, which he seeks to redefine and update in its social dimension, aimed at recovering civic intelligence».
Some of the artist’s choices in carrying on the work – as the use of inventory numbers instead of captions or the inclusion of the negative’s black border in the final presentation of the works – refer to the concept of the archive and remind us that the physical placement of photographic objects, in their wandering fate over the time, deserves to be observed intelligently.
And the title of the work refers precisely to time, taking the phrase chosen by André Breton as his tombstone epitaph, “I seek the gold of time.” A declaration of intent: the tireless search for what is precious and incorruptible that persists in the flow of time, like gold.
The exhibition, opened till June 21th, is part of the #ICCDOFFSITE formula which aims to promote the Institute’s cultural activities off site all around the world. According to Carlo Birrozzi, Director of ICCD: «Exporting and sharing the results of our collection valorization research with an increasingly broad audience through this ever-surprising medium that is photography is what motivated us to establish this new collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Sarajevo».