In Rome the first solo exhibition of American photographer Jeff Bark

Jeff Bark - Paradise Garage is the first solo exhibition in Italy by U.S. photographer Jeff Bark that will bring together a body of more than fifty previously unpublished works dedicated to the Eternal City.

The exhibition, curated by Alessio de’Navasques, is conceived as an itinerary that intends to involve the public by transporting them into the dreamlike world conceived by the photographer: each image is constructed by Bark as if it were the suspended fragment of a story; in his garage inUpstate New York, he himself transforms the bare spaces and walls into evocative and enigmatic scenarios in which iconographic references to the art of the past and alienating details coexist. The sets devised by the photographer for the exhibition at Palazzo delle Esposizioni (the result of a process of study and craftsmanship) become surreal landscapes, convivial scenes, monumental portraits that evoke, in a contemporary key, the spirit of the great picture galleries set up by theme in Roman Baroque palaces.

Domestic interiors, still lifes, naturalistic landscapes, assembled wunderkammer are some of the recurring subjects, where the fake becomes real and reality takes on deceptive forms, in a game of perspectives and reversals. Magnified details, unexpected proportions open new readings of objects and situations, questioning temporal and stylistic conventions.

Jeff Bark began this project over two years ago: a brief visit to the Italian capital triggered a singular creative process of reconstructing the Grand Tour in the Bel Paese, between the imaginary and the real. His point of view restores poetry to objects, some of them souvenirs found in American flea markets, which become the starting point for grand compositions and solemn portraits: symbolic and allegorical representations of human nature, conceived thanks to a skilful use of light and the richness of details, which are often unsettling and unexpected elements. Each image appears, therefore, as extrapolated from a mysterious sequence, the beginning and epilogue of which are unknown.

Authenticity and ambiguity, sensual beauty, lights and shadows, are the coordinates of a Journey to Italy without a precise spatial and chronological connotation, evoking artistic moments ranging from the Renaissance, to the Baroque, to the films of Fellini and Visconti.

The limitation of a small space such as his garage stimulated Bark in this approach that makes the work deeply pictorial.

The exhibition opens from June 7 to July 28, 2019.

For information and reservations you can visit the official website of Palazzo delle Esposizioni.

Pictured: Jeff Bark, Closed Set

In Rome the first solo exhibition of American photographer Jeff Bark

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