Venice, Antonia Di Giulio and Ralph Gibson star in exhibition 1988-2018

Two artists comparing, two sensibilities coming together to create a profound dialogue through the shapes and contours of the bodies portrayed. From Feb. 6 to March 12, 2019, the Island of San Servolo in Venice will host the exhibition 1988-2018, in which Antonia Di Giulio, one of the most important painters on the Italian art scene, juxtaposes her paintings with the shots of the talented U.S. photographer Ralph Gibson, in the sign of the evocation of an experience rooted in a shared past, resurfaced by the juxtaposition of photographic images with brushstrokes on canvas.

Curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, with the patronage of Venice International University and the collaboration and willingness of the San Servolo Servizi Metropolitani company, which has made the exhibition spaces available, the exhibition, through 14 photographs and 14 paintings, builds a dialectic between artistic gazes, different expressive languages, but also between distant eras, as recalled by the title itself. Antonia Di Giulio focuses on a selection of black-and-white portraits of herself, taken in 1988 by Gibson during a photo session in New York, to place them alongside a series of her recent works of the same size, abstract paintings in shades of black, white and gray.

Completing the exhibition is a catalog, edited by Achille Bonito Oliva, which includes contributions by Phyllis Braff, art critic for the New York Times, contemporary history professor at Ca’ Foscari Diego Mantoan, as well as Bonito Oliva himself, Ralph Gibson and Ambassador Umberto Vattani.

Antonia Di Giulio, in her artistic work, creates combinations and pairings that determine the transition from the “true” reality of photography to the bare and austere pictorial sign, from which spring visual energy, dialogues and connections of rich complexity that reveal familiar memories and allusions, but at the same time contrasts of motivations, aesthetic and conceptual dissonances are realized: while on the one hand, in Gibson’s photographic works, there is a representation of the body made up of sensuality, femininity and beauty, on the other hand, in Di Giulio’s painting, the rarefaction and fading of every suggestive presence is imposed, leading to an extremely rigorous and severe style, which, however, does not nullify its source of inspiration.

“While Gibson’s images tell a fairy tale, reveal the origin of a dream that originates from suggestive poses, the painter’s paintings abolish any allusion,” points out Ambassador Umberto Vattani, President of VIU, “It was truly an important encounter that of Antonia Di Giulio with a photographer of such extraordinary sensitivity as Gibson, if her point of arrival lies precisely in rarefaction, in the abandonment of every chromatic trace, every delicate nuance.”

“Painting and photography, in the interplay of black and white, is the combination of this exhibition, which we welcome with enthusiasm and interest to the exhibition spaces of San Servolo Island,” says Andrea Berro, Sole Director of San Servolo srl, “fully enhancing the vocation of the island as a cultural center of the metropolitan city of Venice.”

Images that become narrators of an authorial exchange, of stories and representations, weaving a discourse on the perenniality of art and the strength of the artistic sign, and animating the vivid mystery on the path from the contemplation of the photo to the pictorial work.

To learn more about the two protagonists of the exhibition, you can click here to visit Antonia di Giulio’s website and here for Ralph Gibson’s website.

Venice, Antonia Di Giulio and Ralph Gibson star in exhibition 1988-2018

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