Languages: Italian, English Email: gianluca[at]cosci.fsnet.co.uk
Interest: Photography has been my artistic medium since 1990. To me it is an irreplaceable means of expression because it shows reality in its most direct way: it is the visual evidence of the reality with, very often, all its brutal truth. In that sense I strongly need to believe that there is always a sense of emotional empathy with what I have in front of the camera. I am interested in the point of view of the loser, the marginalised. I think that weak subjectivity could be an interesting territory to explore. Often we are forced to have only restricted views, in awkward positions, difficult to maintain. Nevertheless we could take advantage of this apparent fault to observe and understand things in a different, unexpected way. In that sense I consider my work to have a certain political atmosphere, even though, perhaps, it is not immediately detectable. I try to put the same emphasis on both the subject of my photographs and the way in which it is photographed. In fact, in 2002 I have begun to explore the possibility to direct the eyes attention to specific points on the photographic surface. Working with the focus objective is only a tool to obtain an emotive response within an image not completely self-declared and, for many aspects, deliberately reticent.
I believe that a work of art, among other things, should be brave enough to contribute to raise debates, especially about uneasy subjects or difficult issues. In my opinion the role of artists should be also challenging and questioning the very dynamics that rule the art system and the process of making an art work. My recent photographs taken around some specific power’s places (like Canary Wharf, the City of London etc.) try to suggest, for example, the increasingly oppressive presence of corporate power not just over our everyday life, but also inside the creative process itself, where art very often is perceived by corporations as just another, very sophisticated ad subtle instrument of propaganda, to use and manipulate at will, according to their own agenda.
Bio: I was born in Sant'Elpidio a Mare, Italy in 1970. I studied painting at the “Accademia di Belle Arti” in Bologna between 1989 and 1994. In 1999 I moved to London where I gained a Master Degree in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Between 1998 and 2000 I was a guest tutor at HISK, Institute for Fine Arts, Flanders. That experience gave me the possibility to share my passion and knowledge about contemporary art practice through a one-to-one basis tutorials. These individual meetings or “tailor-made lectures” gave me the inspiration to organise a group show in a private gallery in Bologna where I invited the most talented students (like Nico Docks and Geert Goiris). I work as an independent artist using mainly photography and installation.