Photographs - 2007 EVENT

The frame separates the image from everything that is not image. It defines its content as a signifying world opposed to what is outside the frame, which is the real-life world. Yet this raises the question: to which of these worlds does the frame belong?

(Stoichita, L'invenzione del quadro).

An opportunity to consider the role of the frame in relation to the work of art is offered by a great special event organized by Quadrum Saca 2007. It is Photographs, a show born of the collaboration between nine frame makers and a world-famous photographer, Clinio Giorgio Biavati. The visitors of the show will admire unpublished shots of the artist from Bologna and the frames that will contain them, especially designed to add value and new meanings to the photographic work of art.

At the borderline between painting and photography, the shots of Biavati exploring the myth of the eternal feminine, bodily and transcendental at the same time, will meet up with the frames of the exhibition, the absolutely original containers with which new and amazing works of art are brought to life.

Since its origins, the frame has been playing a crucial role within the mechanisms of perception and production of images by defining the space of representation and by marking the border between the world of art and the real world. The liminal position and the caesura function between two different forms of reality, the phenomenal world and the pictorial or photographic representation, make the frame an extremely ambiguous "place or non-place of an articulation that is never simple, never final, between the space of the artwork and the space of the viewer.”

This ambivalence, that has to do with the “margins" and the ways of representing, makes the frame establish varied and contrasting relations with the work of art (duplication and opposition, reverse and right, saturation and negation, short-circuit of the internal limits of art and the aesthetic side, exasperation of the potentialities of communication, absorption or repulsion of the spectator within the work)

As they visit the PHOTOGRAPHS show at the Bologna Exhibition Centre, gallery managers, interior designers, artists and architects will be thrilled by the discovery that the game between art’s contents and containers never ends. The exhibited frames may melt into the work of Biavati and make its design go beyond the spatial borders or abruptly interrupt its structure hauling towards a surreal contrast, alienate the representation or hide to surrender the entire stage to photography.

Clinio Giorgio Biavati:
Born in Bologna in 1960.
His career as a photographer began in 1979 and in 1981 he worked for the renowned Villani & Figli studio of Bologna, where he gained expertise in architectural and fine art photography.
Opened his first professional studio in 1983, focusing on portraits and the study of figure.
His works are both commissioned and individual research, and has held many workshops on nude photography and lighting techniques.
His first exhibitions and publications date back to1984, when his works began to gain popularity both in Italy and abroad.
In those years he established many contacts with gallery managers and museum curators of the main European cities and with other important photographers such as Peter Beard, Jean Dieuzaide, Berengo Gardin, Basilico, William Klein, Franco Fontana, Gianfranco Salis and Soji Oueda, in whose hometown – Tottori in Southern Japan– he held his first overseas show.
During the 80s his exhibitions continued, culminating in 1990 with the conferment of the European Kodak Award, the greatest acknowledgement at that time for young professional photographers.
As a commercial photographer he has worked on many press campaigns and became a member of the AFIP executive board (Italian Association of Professional Photographers).
At the same time he kept exhibiting in numerous cities like, to name but a few, Paris, Laon, Amsterdam, Cordoba, Wroclaw, Milan (Il Diaframma Brera), Naples and Rome (here he was appointed director of the Damy Photogallery).
His photographs are part of permanent collections in various museums such as: Ken Damy Museum of Brescia, Accademia Carrara of Bergamo, University of Cordoba.
Numerous contributions to the specialized press in addition to various photographic volumes.
A few years ago he started to collaborate in the making of films and naturalistic documentaries on the underwater world at an international level.
He lives and works between Bologna and the island of Mauritius.

The participating companies:

• ALBOR SPA
• ALESSIA INTERNATIONAL SRL
• C.C.C. DE CONCILIO SRL
• CODEC CORNICI SRL
• F.C CORNICI SRL
• FARNE' GROUP SRL
• I.COR. SAS DI CICCO PIETRO & C.
• INDUSTRIA CORNICI D'ARTE SRL
• SMAC CORNICI SAN.COR. SRL

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