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29/8/2007

Lorenza Lucchi Basili

Radford University Art Museum, Radford

Vetro e verita'

Curated by Preston Thayer

The Radford University Art Museum is proud to present this solo exhibition of Lorenza Lucchi Basili curated by the museum director, Preston Thayer.

Vetro e verità (Glass and truth) starts from a curatorial intuition -- that of fostering dialogue between Lucchi Basili's architecture-based photos and a series of mid-XX century glass objects produced in the Murano glass-making district -- including landmark pieces designed by Carlo Scarpa. Lucchi Basili and the glass pieces literally share a common ground, namely the Veneto region, where the Murano district lies and where Lucchi Basili lives and works. The implied relationship is quite open-ended, however. Lucchi Basili's research is focused on a non-representational approach to architecture, and in particular to architectural artifacts of symbolic value for the societies that built them. They are explored through the photographic means rigorously sticking to analogic techniques and avoiding any form of digital manipulation, to reveal unexpected layers of perception that are usually overlooked in our common everyday experience. The work of Lorenza Lucchi Basili provi des us with a phenomenological core-drilling into some of the deep sources of human visual imagery and of their strong links to the Modernist shape grammars which, as in Jorge-Luis Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, are inescapably colonizing reality, which is then not only inherently fictional, as demostrated by so many recent photographic research, but also inherently abstract.

In Lucchi Basili's research, architectures of glass are a recurrent theme and a true source of phenomenological complexity. The interaction with the Murano pieces was therefore intentionally meant to provoke a systematic reflection on the issue. Lucchi Basili's project for the Radford Art Museum delivers exactly that. Four different series have been chosen for the exhibition project, two of which already released and two shown here for the first time, each of which reflects a specific articulation (or, as Deleuze puts it, a specific folding) of a layer of perception. In Space fortynine, Chicago (the folding 'glass reflects'), we try to convince ourselves that the forms that can be seen on the windows of a skyscraper in the Loop cannot be 'real', whereas they entirely are; they are the reality of something purportedly unreal (the reflex). In Space sixtyfive, Vancouver ('glass mimetizes'), we witness the actual disappearance of the glass surface which revea ls the backbone of a banking building in the city's business district, which now emerges as a ghostly presence. In Space seventy, Prague ('glass bends') we discover how flat glass panes may define a curved space that winds around the viewer. In Space seventythree, Prague ('glass transforms'), we see the glass surface turning itself into rock, wood, or gold under rapidly changing, unplanned light conditions. Each of these modes directly question our stipulations of perceptual reality, and our steady, possibly unintended effort to adhere to them to re-affirm well-known and reassuring identitarian coordinates.

After the exhibition opening, Lorenza Lucchi Basili will travel across Virginia for a short artist residence inquiring about the traces of the Palladian legacy in local architectures over various centuries such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello House in Charlottesville, as part of a project for the 500 years since Andrea Palladio’s birth, to be exhibited in Italy in 2008.

Lorenza Lucchi Basili has exhibited widely in the past few years in venues including Modern Art Gallery, Bologna; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; apexart, New York; Meno Parkas, Kaunas; Noass, Riga; Eyedrum, Atlanta; Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana; Fondation Electricitè de France, Paris; Viafarini, Milan; Belleza y Felicidad, Buenos Aires; Raid Projects, Los Angeles; European Photography, Reggio Emilia; Hallwalls at SoundLab, Buffalo; Fuori Uso, Pescara; New Media Scotland, Edinburgh; Zerynthia, Paliano. In october she will have a major solo exhibition at Oredaria, Rome, including a catalog published by Skira with a text by Mark Gisbourne. In november she will have a solo project in the Statements section of Paris Photo.

This exhibition is generously supported by Regione Veneto.

Reception: Thursday, August 30 at 5 p.m.

Radford University Art Museum
Jefferson & Main Radford VA 24142 USA
Hours: Monday thru Friday 8 am to 5 pm

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