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17/10/2006

Michele Zaza

Mudimadrie Galerie, Anvers

Secret horizons

Michele Zaza presents a series of new photographic works specially conceived for the present exhibition. The artist’s work, that has always found a form of expression in photography, does not look to the future, as it happened with the historical avant-gardes and it doesn’t break with the past, but it aims instead to re-form ties with the origin and to rediscover the poetic and mythical dimension of man.

It was first in 1976, with the cycle of work entitled ''anamnesi'', that he invites the spectator into a magical world where the figures seem to fly - as in a dream - amongst pieces of bread but it was not until the end of the 1970 when the artist inverted the relationship between the high and the low, the floor and the stars, freeing objects from the gravity of the ''normal'' world and from their utilitarian function: ''The bread'', said Zaza, ''had lost its nutritional value in order to become a creative element.''

His photos reinstate, in an atmosphere charged with symbols, the figure of a supreme body open to relationships and interaction with a magical and secretive scenery; the artist opens a celestial aerial space which evokes the mysteriousness of the universe - a space of rediscovered freedom. The body is then transfigured by the artist through the application of blue face-paint, and guarded by mysterious forms, sculptural and archetypal presences, or by everyday objects like hunks of bread, tufts of cotton or a pillow.

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Michele Zaza was born in Molfetta (Puglia) on 7th November 1948. After having attended the Institute of Fine Arts in Bari, he moved to Milan to study sculpture with Marino Marini at the Brera Accademy of Fine Arts. His first exhibitions took place in Milan at the Diagramma gallery in 1972, in Bari at Bonomo gallery in 1973, in Brescia at Massimo Minini gallery and in Naples at Lucio Amelio gallery. Zaza has then exhibited in Paris at Yvon Lambert gallery, in Zurich and in Munich (Tanit gallery). He took part in Documenta 6 and 7 at Kassel.

In 1980 he had a one-man show at Leo Castelli gallery in New York and in the same year he exhibited (with a room dedicated to his work) at the Venice Biennale.

In the 1980´s and 1990´s his works collide with tridimensional space: the wooden sculptures are placed outside the photographic space. Photography and sculpture strengthen one another in turn. The space becomes a sacred place, referring metaphorically to the structure of the universe, to the earth, and simultaneously to heaven.

Over the last few years important one-man shows have focused on his work in Moscow, Rome and Geneva (Mamco - museum of contemporary art).

Mudimadrie Galerie
Vlaamse Kaai 48 - Anvers

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