Paolo Gasparini. Field of Images

With the distinguished presence of the artist opens "Paolo Gasparini. Field of Images". The exhibition summarizes more than sixty years of uninterrupted artistic career, bringing together in 16 sections, series by countries and themes, as well as interesting binomials and sets of 4 or 6 photographs. Although distant in time or from different geographical and socio-economic contexts, it allows us to make a straightforward reading of the critical discourse of Paolo.
The sensorial universe that Gasparini perceives in Paris, Quito, London, Lausanne, São Paulo, Bogota, or Maracaibo, just to name a few of the cities he has photographed, is reflective.
His approach is an institution and an ideal reference for understanding alter-modernity, that neologism that seeks to define interconnections between disparate realities, without homogenizing or labeling, without putting first or prioritizing, without denying singularities. The links Paolo creates between two or more images disobey the canon; they are sharp connections that nevertheless do not operate by victimizing marginalized or dispersed groups.
Paolo interconnects the ambivalence between drama and enjoyment; he embraces the essential with the mundane. Master in the art of proposing dialogues and consensus, his snapshots and the infinite set he generates among them are traces of the steps he has recorded throughout the length and breadth of the Latin American territory and are impregnated with suspicion.
With the precision of words, Gasparini exponentially and conceptually enriches his photographs: scribbled or sprayed texts, advertising slogans, torn, imposture, reflected posters. The titles and quotations he assigns to his photographs also function as a clear amplifier of his visual and conceptual intentions.
In the exhibition, we find photo books such as "Andata e ritorno" (1953-2016), "El suplicante" (1971-2007), "Retromundo" (1987), KARAKARAKAS (1954-2014), among others. We also see magazines that collect photographic reports such as "Cruz del Sur" (1947-1948) and highlight his spectacular photo-murals, a genre conceived by the author, is shown one of them in the room with the title: "El Ángel de la historia" (1963-2018) the 'panorama' of multiple territories, acronymic and attached to memories, a mosaic of photographs and quotes against oblivion, own images that dialogue with iconic images of other photographers of the Latin American continent from Tina Modotti to Manuel Álvarez Bravo.
During the opening day, Paolo presented his most recent photo book entitled "Fotollavero México" (2021). Like all his award-winning photobooks, a collaborative work whose leitmotiv (the fotollavero) is a small and curious portrait transformed into a kitsch souvenir, a pocket image, an amulet. For this publication, he invites Juan Villoro, friend, and writer, to illustrate with his words the 115 images that Paolo has selected and that the graphic designer César Jara has elegantly designed. At the end of the book, we find four-fold-out triptychs, as Paolo says: a panorama of "48 photos seen as in a rear-view mirror and that modulate -a little- my vision of Mexico".
With great knowledge, Paolo's retrospective gaze dissects the mystery and fascination awakened by an entire continent (wrongly called "South American") that cries out to be understood in its right dimension.
The exhibition will travel to Fundación Mapfre Madrid, parallel to Photo España, from the end of May until August 2022.