The Hidden Project

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The Hidden Project Aqua Aura curated by Carolina Lio

Š Design H2O, 2015

The Hidden Project

08.07.15 - 07.08.15

Galeria H2O presenta The hidden project, la primera exposición individual en España del fotógrafo italiano Aqua Aura. La exposición, comisariada por Carolina Lio, se organiza en colaboración con el IIC, Istituto Italiano di Cultura. Se exhibirán dos de las principales series del artista: Portraits Survivants y Frozen Frames. Ambas manipulación de la realidad con el objetivo de construir una nueva dimensión. Los retratos como distorsiones grotescas de una humanidad que podría interpretarse como post-atómica.

Los paisajes, collages de fotos tomadas en Europa y Oriente Medio mezcladas en postproducción digital, como síntesis de la idea de “lugar”.

En ambas series el autor juega con el concepto de ocultar y revelar a la vez. En H2O llevando al espectador a una dinámica de negación de la imagen. Así las imágenes se exponen en condiciones de poca visibilidad o incluso embaladas. Y se utilizan espacios poco corrientes de la galería, como un almacén en construcción en el que los espectadores tendrán que buscar las obras de arte entre pasarelas y herramientas. Esta dificultad, este esfuerzo extra que se requiere, conduce a una experiencia frustrante intencional de la exposición que no permitirá en ningún caso ver la obra completa.

Será posible ver las imágenes íntegramente sólo a través del catálogo y a través de una selección exhibida de forma paralela en el IIC Instituto Italiano de Cultura. Con esta exposición, Aqua Aura abre una amplia reflexión sobre las dinámicas de fruición del arte contemporáneo y la relación entre obras y público, así como sobre la sustitución posmoderna del espacio físico con el espacio de la documentación. © Design H2O, 2015

Š Design H2O, 2015

The Hidden Project

08.07.15 - 07.08.15

The hidden project, first solo show in Spain of Italian artist Aqua Aura, presents at Galeria H2O and IIC Italian Institute of Culture of Barcelona artist’s main series so far: Portraits Survivants and Frozen Frames. Both are a manipulation of reality aimed to build a new dimension. The portraits are grotesque distortions of a humanity that seems to be post-atomic, while his ‘frozen’ landscapes are obtained as a collage of several photos taken throughout Europe and Middle East, mixed together during digital postproduction.

Aqua Aura’s whole research is indeed around transformation, artifice and merging elements. The same pseudonym he uses recalls aqua aura, a natural quartz that has been coated with gold fumes: the synergy of the quartz and gold combine to bring about a new electric or sky blue crystal with subtle flashes of rainbow iridescence. It’s just from this suggestive artifice that Aqua Aura drew inspiration for describing his practice after a transformation period - lasted almost 12 years - spent at a healthy distance from the art word as an independent researcher, spectator and traveller. To sum up, designation Aqua Aura represents his (re)birth, the result of a slow metamorphosis which has generated new creative stimuli and attitudes.

It’s in 2010 when Aqua Aura, with his brand new name, started out specifically in the field of art photography as a research tool. The core of this new investigation concentrates on the one hand on the ‘discipline’ of portrait, on the other hand on the attempt to reinvent the idea of landscape. Following these two roads, his main corpuses of works so far are: © Design H2O, 2015

1. A photographic series of portraits mounted in light boxes and entitled Portraits Survivants, whose aesthetic debt can be traced back to the great tradition of 17th-century Dutch Golden Age and Spanish painting. It’s a collection of posed images re-elaborated using post-production softwares. Each piece is the combination of a previous planning work and portrayed people’s mute stories.

2. An experimentation around the idea of landscape, Frozen Frames, which represents unreal mental places with the realism given by the photographic medium and post-production tools. As the artist himself said, they are “generated as a synthesis of places summarized from time to time in a cruel perfection” and are “an attempt to get some kind of perfect landscape extracted from impressions of reality, essentially false but plausible”.

What emerges is the contrast between ‘perfection’ and ‘imperfection’ in a close relationship with the terms ‘real’ and ‘unreal’. Also the concept of ‘mask’ is largely used and applied indiscriminately to people and places, though with opposite results. Masked people are deformed, made ugly, theatrical and exasperated in their own emotional condition. Conversely, landscapes are deprived of any colours, features and peculiarities concerning feelings. Whilst people seem unreal and have been undeniably alterated, places remain plausible. But at a closer look, while the landscapes reveal that they had been digitally manipulated and are only fake sceneries, the portraits start talking about those autobiographic traces that make the pictures somehow authentic.

Moral of the story, manipulation of reality gives a perfect stereotype plausible but inexistent; instead, reality can be so peculiar that often people define it unrealistic unless is covered and smoothed. This paradox creates a gap between the esthetical acceptance of the world as it is and as it is expected to be in a society accustomed to ‘masks’ and ‘spectacularisation’. The criteria to define reality is increasingly based on the possibility to be accepted as pleasing and predictable while the rest suffers a mechanism of denial.

Desolation of both aspects is the inevitable outcome.

In The hidden project, Aqua Aura transfers this issue in a specific field: the dynamics of fruition of contemporary art. The exhibition, which brings the viewer into a game of denial of the image, contrasts overtly with the spectacularisation of contemporary practices and explicit visual codes.

In H2O, the artworks are indeed exhibited in conditions of poor visibility or even packed. Moreover, unusual parts of the gallery are used, as for example a warehouse still under construction in which spectators have to seek artworks walking through catwalks and carpentry tools. This difficulty leads to an intentional frustrating experience of the exhibition which will not allow in any case to see the complete pictures. It will be possible to see the images in full only through the catalogue and through a small selection of photos exhibited in parallel at the IIC. Aqua Aura’s project deals with a reflection about the relationship between art and its audience as well as the post-modern replacement of physical spaces with the space of © Design H2O, 2015

documentation. As a matter of fact, lots of today’s approaches to art are split into two apparently opposite attitudes. On the one hand institutional cultural policy encourages spectacularisation in exhibitions and educational paths pointed towards mass audiences to justify investment in cultural and creative assets and generate consensus. On the other hand, conceptual, post-conceptual and anti-formalist languages tend clearly towards pure investigation and make the visit to the exhibition optional and replaceable with documentation, virtual and printed material, photocopies - often in black and white – and video recordings in which data are obviously favoured compared with sensible experience.

Minimizing the aesthetic component of his pieces, Aqua Aura puts into question the actual use of images in the art system. The project, which denies the viewer to see the pictures, creates a paradoxical situation: it’s not the construction of the image to be exposed, but the construction of the exhibition as a ‘standalone’ system emancipated by the production of works. This extreme paradox leaves uncovered some fundamental questions of contemporary art practices and curating today concerning priorities between audience, research, production and education.

Carolina Lio Barcelona, June 2015

© Design H2O, 2015

The Hidden Project Frozen Frames

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The Hidden Project Portraits Survivants

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The Hidden Project Ă?ndice de obras

FROZEN FRAMES

The perfect ocean 100 x 100 cm. Islandia, Finlandia e Italia, 2014

The fortress 100 x 100 cm. Islandia, Finlandia e Italia, 2015

In the half light 35 x 80 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2013

Sidereal nr. 1 40 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2013

Fumes 26,50 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2012

Rubble

Glacier nr. 6 26,50 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2011.

Glacier nr. 7 26,50 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2011.

Glacier nr. 8 26,50 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2012.

Glacier nr. 9 26,50 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2012.

Sidereal nr. 2 48 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2012.

26,50 x 40 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2012.

Night-time flowers 29 x 90 cm. Finlandia e Italia, 2014.

Wreckage under the moonlight 45 x 45 cm. Islandia, Alemania e Italia, 2014.

Eggs 26 x 94 cm. Finlandia e Italia, 2014.

Twilight 27 x 43 cm. Islandia e Italia, 2012.

Heinz 31 x 70 cm. Islandia, Alemania e Italia, 2013.

Underground 45 x 45 cm. Islandia, Holanda e Italia, 2013.

Portrait Survivant nr. 10 100 x 150 x 3 cm. Italia (Milano), 2011.

Glacier triptych 26,50 x 124 cm (en tres partes). Islandia e Italia, 2011.

42 nr. 2 124 x 84 x 8 cm. Italia (Milano), 2012.

Landscape just before dawn 68 x 90 cm. Finlandia e Italia, 2014.

Portrait Survivant nr. 2 175 x 40 x 10 cm. Italia (Milano), 2010.

PORTRAITS SURVIVANTS

Portrait Survivant nr. 8/II 160 x 106 x 3 cm. Italia (Milano), 2012.

Portrait Survivant nr. 7/III 98 x 65 x 10 cm. Italia (Milano), 2011.

Petit Portrait 28 x 45 x 10 cm. Italia (Milano), 2012.

La paix chimique 102x145x10. Italia (Milano), 2013.

Portrait d’un portrait 100 x 100 x 8 cm. Italia (Milano), 2014.

Portrait de la poussier 131 x 94 x 8 cm. Italia (Milano), 2012-13.

Portrait intime 74 x 85 x 3 cm. Italia (Milano), 2013.

Portrait de femme inconnue 85 x 85 x 3 cm. Italia (Milano), 2012.

Portrait Survivant nr. 18 130 x 130 x 3 cm. Italia (Milano), 2011/12.

Galeria H2O Director Joaquim Ruiz Millet Coordinació Àlex Castro

© Fotografías: Aqua Aura © Diseño: Galeria H2O © De la edición: Galeria H2O, julio 2015 Reservados todos los derechos.

Prohibida la reproducción total o parcial en ninguna forma ni por ningún medio sin permiso expreso de su editor.

Depósito Legal:

Diseño JQ RM + ACA

Edición catálogo Fotografías Aqua Aura

Galeria H2O Verdi 152 Barcelona, 08012 T +34 93 415 18 01 galeria@h2o.es www. h2o.es facebook.com/galeriah2o twitter.com/galeriah2o issuu.com/galeriah2o instagram.com/galeriah2o

Edición numerada y firmada por el fotógrafo y el galerista de 5 ejemplares, tres numerados en cifras romanas y dos en números árabes para el artista y el galerista.

Aqua Aura Fotógrafo

Joaquim Ruiz Millet Galeria H2O

En colaboración con Carrer Verdi, 152. 08012 Barcelona Tel. (34) 934 151 801 galeria@h2o.es http://www.h2o.es