ALESSANDRA SPRANZI

P420 is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition at the gallery by Alessandra Spranzi (Milan, 1962), after the previous Maraviglia (2014) and Mani che imbrogliano (2018).

The show features recent works, made over the last two years: Esercizi, the new series of color photographs, and four videos made specifically for the occasion. The context in which the works interact is a place suspended in time, which the artist formulates with white and green curtains, typical of the summer months.

Alessandra Spranzi works with the photographic image in different ways and forms: photographing, re-photographing, gathering, cutting, indicating, erasing. She intervenes when images and things shift away from their uses and become, so to speak, unaware of themselves, their possibilities and their beauty.

The images created by Alessandra Spranzi leave us suspended; they are open images, we might say, but not in the sense of a question open to the viewer, not to be interrogative, but to safeguard the enigma, or in any case the depth, of a certain intrinsic inexpressibility.

As Lisa Andreani writes in the critical essay that accompanies the exhibition: “In the first and second rooms, as we shall see, certain subjects stand out more than others. The chairs are are in a precaurious position, resting on a table, waiting to lay claim to a shared function, or perhaps a state of deployment, more than anything else. Extraordinary objects, bearers of history and stories. Implication of a hierarchy, tending towards the patriarchal, but also things with the force of knowing how to play. The chair is also democratic, malleable and comfortable. The other subject, a warm presence, is a circular form: balls, oranges, arrays of fruit, a walnut, a table leg.”

Egli. A cavallo, Metronomo (non farlo), Palleggi, Tovaglia al vento are the video works that create an intriguing and unexpected visual and aural rhythm. Lisa Andreani continues: “ The visual and musical composition initiated by these objects and gestures immersed in a quiet life expands into the surrounding space, with a polyphonic but still minimal score. The crisscrossing sounds of a boy’s and a girl’s juggling a ball, respectively in an area facing the sea and in a courtyard, takes active part through the tracing of the beat, so each of us can find ourselves in the image before our eyes. But these are not the only images in motion: a man  rides forward with his horse during a local celebration, a tablecloth is  blown by the wind. ”

 In coordination with the exhibition, the artist's book Esercizi, has been published, in an edition of 100 copies.