Book1 english by Franco Donaggio

DIGGING UP

CON FINES

DIGGING UP CONFINES Curated by Sandra Benvenuti Produced by ALCHIMIA Art Gallery Freeport, Maine, U.S.A.

TEXTS Franco Donaggio Sandra Benvenuti Monica Beri Italo Zannier Roberto Mutti Denis Curti Mauro Fiorese PHOTO CREDITS ©Franco Donaggio TEXTS CREDITS ©The authors ART DIRECTOR Franco Donaggio TRANSLATIONS Cristina Franzoni THANKS Monica Beri / Alchimia Gallery Giampiero Bonacini Sandra Benvenuti Cristina Franzoni Marco Porta, sculptor Carlo Manini, sculptor

DIGGING UP

CON FINES

WRITTEN SIGNS OF LIGHT by Monica Beri

Light is my passion. The sinuous forms, the reflections modelling the environment as well as the valuable design have always fascinated me. My interest in design – especially Italian design – is the push that led me to observe art with new eyes and enlarge my horizons beyond pleasure, thus steering me inevitably towards collecting. It was the photographer and friend Franco Fontana to lead me towards a new language of light: photography. As a novice, I yearned for a more precise understanding of this charming world made of light and shadows which eventually enraptured me completely. Now, photography is part of my collection with full rights. Today not only do I collect for economic investment, but also for the pleasure of admiring beauty and being able to enjoy, in the intimacy of my house, the slightest detail composing an artwork which – by magic – appears every time different and always reveals something new to me. All this enchants me and pays back generously the sacrifices done to purchase it. One day Fontana invited me to one of his exhibitions, it was a two-solo show at the Civic Museum in Chioggia: Franco Fontana and Franco Donaggio. I did not know Donaggio then, but Fontana used to speak about him with enthusiasm and told me he was a relevant artist in the contemporary world of photography thus stirring my curiosity. As soon as I saw his works in large format exhibited in the museum, I was struck by this author’s grand visions. They were pictures in color: the artist had depicted a noisy hectic town but had placed Man within an intimate space, nude, without the armor that everyday life imposes on him. The author had extracted him from the urban context and placed him into complex, daring urban compositions recreated with such surreal harmony that I was totally seduced. I am enchanted by the way Donaggio investigates and portrays human vulnerability and desires; his look is sharp, profound, soft, never shouted. I have always been fascinated by the artists’ capacity of anticipating times, making us aware of the existence of other layers of sensitiveness. They can literally transform pain into constructive beauty. I felt I needed to know more about this artist, so I decided to pay him a visit in his studio in Milan. Being able to meet in person an artist you admire so much, listening to the reasons why he had chosen certain themes to be later developed in his works, entering his world...all this is priceless. I had the opportunity to know not only an artist whom I praised, but also to appreciate all his works produced during a 25-year-long career and learn the techniques he had used to execute them. It was incredible. I found myself in a mysterious and extraordinary world and I decided to grow my collection and transform a part of my new house in America into a contemporary art gallery. The importance of sharing my emotions and studying the artist more in-depth are the reasons why I decided to produce this book. I have entrusted the art director of my gallery Sandra Benvenuti to cure the editorial project and introduce the artist’s profile. Far from being a mere monographic descriptive publication of a compendium of works produced over the time, this book has the taste of a sublime tale, of an art fable, of an extraordinary opera omnia of an author who, by nature, cannot help but expand and cross over any delimiting confine, with a jump.

THE DIFFERENT FACES OF REALITY by Sandra Benvenuti

If we think about Surrealism, the extraordinary compositions of Magritte, De Chirico or Dalì approach us in an immediate way, they are artworks that we know and appreciate. In painting, the artists who experiment with the surrealist wave are many, whereas in photography are few. But what is Surrealism? According to the encyclopedia: Surrealism is a psychic automatism through which you intend to express – both verbally and in writing or in any other way – the real functioning of thought. Surrealism draws its inspiration by man’s subconscious, which is held as the deepest and truest degree of reality. It is based on the omnipotence of dream, on the neutral play of thought without the control of reason, beyond any aesthetical or moral concerns. The great masters have managed to represent dream as the source of a free thought without filters, and through their art they have encouraged us to see the world with different eyes. Reality is never as you see it: truth is above all imagination – René Magritte – Yet, if this concept is clear in literature or in painting, strangely enough it is hardly visible in photography. Man Ray, among the first photographers in history to have embraced the surrealist wave, chose photography as his favorite art discipline to express himself; he said: photography is not art! Photography is not an invention of the camera but of the mind. In fact, everything originates from the artist’s eye, where the thought overlaps the image and modifies it freely. Plenty are the amateur or professional photographers who use a camera; they would feel stripped without this tool, a tool which is more and more complex. But as it was for Man Ray now it is for Franco Donaggio: their operation is purely dialectical and the camera is just a pretext, a negligible device appeared almost by chance in their intellectual play of weaving key mental concepts. In fact, going back in time, we notice that Franco Donaggio’s work feeds on the same surreal nourishment of Man Ray’s, with frequent references to metaphysics. Donaggio, certainly a nonconformist artist, it’s an author who has been chosen by photography without being hindered by the tool; in his image never appears a transposition of reality but one of its hypothesis, a cerebral suggestion which is masterfully transferred onto paper to represent a reality different from the one that normally appears to us, thus revealing something that goes beyond the sensory experience and leaves room to dreams and visions originated by subconscious. In the artist’s works also the places, no matter how realistic they are, have a dreamlike significance where the composition, the sign and the absence of noise emerge. In his projects photography – although sustained by a mature, meticulous technique – seems to move out of the way and allow the observer to see. Studying the artist’s works, a logic evaluation suggests that photography is the baseline technique, yet an instinctive evaluation says something different, it walks autonomously on a trip along unknown suggestions, often imposing. The message that Donaggio communicates in his works is clear in all his works, from Metaportraits to Sculptures. His trait is confident, elegantly produced for creating extraordinary works by turning dreams into daily life. And that’s actually where the artist’s genius lies: he does not capture a definite photograph in a shot, he replaces it with a far more personal image, and thanks to the skillful use of a plausible perspective which destabilizes the observer, the author turns the real into unreal thus driving us to dig under the surface to discover that reality is far more fascinating than expected.

I come from the province of the 60s. I was brought up in the golden era of the Beatles, the Pink Floyd, Stanley Kubrick, Asimov, Avedon and Hiro. Then – with these experiences – I drifted towards the new world of photography on an uplifting discovery journey which marked my existence indelibly. When I started my career as a photographer I was very young and self-taught; I took up advertisement and fashion, then fine art photography. I started to live a long period of positive excitement which still goes on. As I grew older I felt the need to direct my research towards a more definite direction involving not only aesthetic beauty, but also – and especially – inner personal knowledge. It was like following the new threads of a deep root grown in my mind in an area of spirituality that I had not investigated yet. That is why I decided to title this book Digging up Confines. What I meant was a border that had been trespassed, a zone where the sense of limit only depends on us. I started an unstoppable artistic experimentation firstly with analog then with digital photography. Thanks to the meticulous practise of these techniques, I started a new deep introspective journey that has allowed me to see the conventional reality as a starting point to foresee other realities, far more personal and truer. Within that context I found an unexpected awareness of re-birth and maturity that ultimately led me to tell my present story through projects and words. My photography is synonymous with shaping dreams, visions and matter just like the clay for a sculptor. To me the shoot is similar to a brick that – piled up onto other bricks – builds my sense of mystery. Franco Donaggio

Works

1995 2015 Metaportraits Station Reflections Before the Dawn Sculptures

META

PORTRAITS

I love the trips of thought, the sublimation of collective imagination, all the paths that lead to new destinations through Art. Metaportraits is the son of the night; a free fall into my interior places along dead zones looking for their breath in time between twilight and dawn, between shreds of dreams and ghosts that blend with remembrances fallen into forgetfulness. Franco Donaggio

METAPORTRAITS by Denis Curti

It’s the enormous investment on the project. The renunciation of the fact. The decline of the objective detail. The abolition of memory as a tool to record the present time. The recovery of ethereal forms and the harmony of an elusive feeling you can hardly photograph. I think these are the core elements of Franco Donaggio’s work. I think these are the divergent features of an operation which aims at detaching from a photographic language that seems more and more tired and isolated. In order to fully comprehend these photographs you have to enter a more visionary dimension, leaving all your possible doubts behind and forgetting any references to likelihood and photogenic rules. Then you should consider the wish for a failed process of recognition, the definition of the borders of an amazing discovery of the detail as well as the involvement in the determined abolition of the concept of luminosity in the photograph, which here becomes a pure planning quality. Finally, just like in a complex recipe of top cuisine, you’ll manage to see the entire value and meaning of these images. Donaggio says: This work was for me an important escape from banality and sometimes, even from reality. The views of urban life that always envelop the windows of my car, offer subtle atmosphere of anguish and alienation, thus stimulating me greatly to freely fall into my inner life. So it was actually the search for an inner space to give me the opportunity to join, almost virtually, the same faces portrayed. Who believes, like me, that portraits are important moments where ideas meet, he will also see how the photographer and the subject had the chance, here in these images, to experiment the excitement of transparency and to relish the audacity of a relationship of intense curiosity and reciprocal complicity. Restlessness and planning are two essential qualities of Donaggio’s work. Two qualities that allow the birth of his unique creations, independently from the post-production final phase. Donaggio always says that: to express myself at my best in this visual work I have used particular techniques such as the double exposure, or some backgrounds made with charcoal drawings or geometrical back-lit paper patterns to especially stress the emotions of the subjects that had been previously portrayed. The total transformation of the figure, the deep grey of the prints, the visceral and careful attitude of the author seem to outline a visual journey into infinite depths. May be this is the result of an inner and collective drama. Today photography represents the ideal companion of this drama.

Informal self-portrait

Girl with the hat

The game after the war

Crazy locomotive

Inner immersion

Human flower

Man in thought

Woman in thought

Nostalgia

Photographer posing

The intellectual

Seduction

The punishement

The queen

The king

The jump

14 48

STATION

Technical information

Station is an analog photographic project created in 1996. This series is composed of 25 prints in limited edition: edition of 25, gelatin silver 16x20 inch. selenium toned, printed, numbered and signed on the back by the author. prints selling out : pigment prints 16x20 inch. – at closing edition – II artist’s proof.

THE JOURNEY OF ELSEWHERE by Sandra Benvenuti

Franco Donaggio’s soul has always lived in the restlessness of research and, with his art expertise, he heads for horizons of spirituality. The author investigates the big enigma of life: who we are and where we are going. It is exactly from this question that the series Station originates. The artist chooses for his stage the Central Station in Milan as the ideal base to start from, a non-lieu par excellence. From a station either you leave or arrive, and during your wait or along the route you can lose yourself. The author catches the ethereal frailty of a moment without barriers and transports it elsewhere, almost beyond distance. In this series, Donaggio creates the paradox of an unreal snap-shot, namely the perception of observing a perfect photo shoot which, in brief, does not exists: it is actually an image that takes shape in the experimentation of a new story through a projection of a slide reflected in a deforming mirror, and that eventually leads you towards a new perception of reality. The strange sensation that paradoxically pervades you, is that the real truth makes way for the fictitious one, thus living a new realistic completeness with the final work of the artist.

STATION

I do not love praying with words; I try to do that through pictures. Only this way I can find my truth again and my silence. I see earthly happiness like a small colored hyphen on a long grey line of labour, a sweet instant of amnesia in our ongoing question about who we are and where we are going. We are all together on a trip, on the big train of life towards the end station of our disappearance, or maybe of our life again. An expiring traveling card in your hand. A time card... Franco Donaggio

STANDING, MAYBE TRAVELLING by Mauro Fiorese

Departure time and arrival times, tickets and extra charge, track number, destination, seat. Connection. Or else just Change? Once you have freed your mind and your heart from all this information – which is however useful and fundamental in order to set out on a journey – and once you have got on that train, you’ll be able to be finally transported without the need of keeping your eyes fixed on the street. And then, the destination of your trip will become another Station. From a Station you can leave, arrive or only transit, often without even no changes its identity according to how it is experienced. Franco Donaggio sees the Station exactly like a place of transition, not only a physical room, but also a space of intellectual exchange, where you can follow an art path made of continual questions, a few certainties and much longing for knowledge. A journey, that of Franco Donaggio, where the mental condition of the artist, who’s physically surrounded by travellers like him, allows him to exclude himself in order to survive. In doing this, he is supported by his wish to fly beyond the mind limits – as the author admits – up to this parallel world where the identity and the age of the wanderers who cross it, count for nothing. What counts is instead his personal vision which makes him move through this limbo, giving him the opportunity to witness the fact. Donaggio’s vision, which is created both through traditional and digital photography, dosen’t absolutely coincide with a concept of objective or total reality. Donaggio’s attitude is very different from those who are compelled to use glasses to see better. In fact, he uses an optical instrument to move away from a perfect wel-defined vision of the surrounding reality. Donaggio’s aim is to offer us a new vesion of reality, perhaps twisted and deceptive, but actually evocative. A visionary story that, paraphrasing a concept of the author himself, becomes an extraordinary sweet prayer made of images.

Station #4

Station #3

Station #9

Station #2

Station #5

Station #12

Station #15

Station #8

Station #10

Station #22

Station #6

Station #24

Station #25

Station #28

Station #23

REFLECTIONS

Technical information Reflections was created in 2006. This series includes 40 prints in limited edition: edition of 25, chromogenic prints on metallic paper 13x20 inch. numbered and signed on the back. edition of 10, chromogenic prints on metallic paper in variable size, numbered and signed on the back. II artist’s proof.

THE STRENGTH OF CONCEPT by Sandra Benvenuti

Donaggio loves raising questions and disorienting in order to stimulate reflection and lead viewers to feel rather than to see. In this project, what emerges is a mysterious conceptual strength which draws precious nourishment from the conjunction between the artist’s story and his present as in in Reflections, for example, where the artist does not only catch what actually exists, but he also depicts the lagoon as something maternal and mysterious where the threads of remembrances of experienced vicissitudes, interrupted over the years, can finally become knotted again with present time, in photographic visions. The lagoon of Donaggio is a land where emotions are free to fluctuate beyond the horizon of a polished noiseless landscape which leaves room in order to listen to time’s silent voice. The images of the project, because of a basic elegant black and white, are permeated with a timeless quietness where nothing is confused. Every detail, no matter how out-of-focus or sharp, reveals everything: the author approaches the timelessness of the subconscious by challenging, once again, the reality with photographic credibility thus conveying a sensation of immortality and peace. With regard to this project, the artist says: I left my land when I was very young; now I would like to stop and reflect about my past, pay homage to what I once left behind and – from another time – dedicate a love song to the story of my past and to my beloved places. Reflections is a journey beyond the rational language, a sacred place that lives in the depth of the soul and, as he himself says, a love song.

REFLECTIONS

I live the lagoon as a place of cult suspended between earth and heaven. Immersed in my thoughts, I observe the cradle of my origins. I think about my father and mother, about my personal story and a future interrupted by the magic of a present time, which I am eager to make eternal. Franco Donaggio

GRAPHICAL SIGNS AS UNIVERSAL SYNTESIS by Italo Zannier

During the second post-war period, when the ideological ferment was particularly lively, photography was divided into the graphic and the neorealis photography. The latter seemed to gain the upper hand, especially from a political point of view, thanks to its commitment to social issues and humanistic provocation – at least apparently – In photography Paul Strand and Henri Cartier Bresson were the winning figures, above all the latter, being an explicit narrator of the comédie humaine, while the masters Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan focused mainly on a more private and unusual interpretation of the landscape, which was far from the views of the coeval Ansel Adams or Edward Weston, that were instead full-bodied, matter-like and sometimes even slimy. Siskind’s and Callahan’s minimalism, often essential for rendering the bodies of the subjects less thick, was also bitterly attacked by pre-eminent sociologists of those days, and even charged with inert formalism and hedonistic amateur practise – at least this is what I remember! – notwithstanding Steichen’s approval, who was smartly aimed at surpassing patterns of thought and immanent rhetoric and willing to accept new graphic formulas. Expressive forms historically implicit in Photography that in those days was living – just like the other art forms – a strong, even exasperated dialectic between realism and abstractionism, between sociologic objectiveness and – abstract and surreal – dream of reality. But all the images are like that in the end, including those – more rare and however polluted – which are not photo images. Franco Donaggio has lived that same season later on, twenty years after, when by the time many pre-concepts had been clarified, even if with many difficulties. He faced with imagination the idea of an enchanted metaphysical world. A filtered almost curried universe, so cleaned out as to reach the purity of the significant sign through a synthesis of the elements that must be essential in order to express simultaneously a suggestive concept of reality – here of oneiric reality – and sometimes even distressing like in a nightmare of a nocturnal dream found at dawn, in Photography. When thinking about Italian artists, Donaggio seems to me, without knowing or willing it, a Luigi Veronesi’s or a Bruno Munari’s hypothetical disciple; besides, many of his images seem to derive from oriental symbolists for their voluptuous style embroidered with virtuosity, including also the photo illustrating a couple of flying seagulls. Franco Donaggio’s photography goes against the mainstream, at last! An exercise for the eyes which proposes a harmonically structured Eden with lights and essential signs that invite us to discover the harmony of a landscape, perhaps not a daily one, but however intriguing as a concept, as a philosophy of the intimate reality, which is less known and here iconically recognisable.

Reflections #12

Reflections #2

Reflections #33

Reflections #7

Reflections #4

Reflections #5

100

Reflections #6

101

Reflections #17

102

103

Reflections #11

104

105

Reflections #25

106

107

Reflections #43

108

109

Reflections #23

110

111

Reflections #28

112

Reflections #40

113

Reflections #44

114

115

Reflections #35

116

117

BEFORE T HE DAW N

119

Technical information

The series Before the Dawn was created between 2007 and 2009. It includes 37 prints in limited edition: edition of 5, pigment prints 16x21 inch. numbered and signed on the back. edition of 5, pigment prints 44x88 inch. numbered and signed on the back. II artist’s proof.

*** A special thanks to the sculptors Marco Porta and Carlo Manini who have kindly collaborated to the realization of this project. Marco Porta - pag. 137 Carlo Manini - pag. 131/143

120

BETWEEN DARK AND LIGHT by Sandra Benvenuti

Eccentric author in ongoing movement and against mass production, Donaggio shifts – with instinctive naturalness – his surrealist credo towards Symbolism, and Before the Dawn represents its visual proof. In 1928, the well-known psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung stated that the subconscious is composed of images. Images that are the archetypes determining the psychic world, whose symbolic representation expresses itself through dreams, art and religion. Jung underlined that an image is symbolic when it implies something that is beyond its immediate and obvious meaning, that is when it possesses a wider, unconscious side which is never defined with accuracy nor fully explained. If anything, the image works as a door towards a magic and mysterious universe. This statement of Jung perfectly describes Donaggio’s work Before the Dawn, an extraordinary project which originates in the soft light of daybreak, the temporal space mentioned in the title. The creative process of the artist never originates during the shoot, but when he fuses together the elements he encounters along his path. The starting point of his whole work is the pre-visualization of the project to be realized. The development of the theme to interpret is meditated and planned firstly in his mind and then on the paper with post-production. Before the Dawn is the synthesis of this creative process. The author inspects the urban environment around him and lingers on everything: from a detail to the whole; after that, he re-composes it in his photography as though he saw it for the first time, thus giving it a new birth. Starting from a real landscape, the artist captures with his camera – in different moments – fragments of daily life made of objects and people; then, just like a wise alchemist, Donaggio extracts the real elements photographed and blends them in the subconscious of an unpredictable and fascinating image. In this project the artist uproots Man from the actual context and transfers him into a new magic world which, notwithstanding the presence of some obstacles, is a free world from an intellectual point of view. The artist elaborates the matter of urban walls or marble sculptures and then reshapes their forms until he creates a new scenario where Man is always a traveller seen during his moments of freedom and anguish. Very wide squares, marble geometries, bizarre elements like sculptures, marble busts entrapped in classical columns and faceless people are all actors of an unreal scenario, motionless characters showing a sense of solitude and mystery. Three are the principal symbols composing Before the Dawn: Man, the stone and the clouds. The author’s interest, again, is in Man. Yet, if Donaggio in Station investigates the big enigma of life and the existential question, in Before the Dawn he turns his gaze to desire, aspirations and fears, all feelings that are often dozing in the swirling labyrinth of life. The stone represents the human illusion of stability, of something reassuring. However, the scenes of human paths on this comforting, solid base change and often become insidious. Finally the cloud, which is seen by the artist as an impenetrable entity appearing unexpectedly, forever free and elusive. In these territories the artist modifies the sense of the whole and donates instants of light to passing clouds similar to charioteers of dream heading for the dawn of a new day.

121

BEFORE T HE DAW N

122

Before the Dawn is a descent into my semi-darkness along a path rich in suspended spaces, accompanied by the breath of the night. With the industriousness of a bee, gathering hundreds of small and big aesthetic elements, I have created worlds of smooth surfaces and of passing clouds. Like in huge silent theaters, matter and clouds become visual metaphors of existential quest and time volatility. In these territories I try to find eternity through this unmeasurable and disarming grandness of this dangerous ambition. The hasty actors of my scenes quickly walk to other theaters squeezed by enormous spaces, as enormous as my unmeasurable lust for knowledge.They move and trespass an earthly time to leap into another dimension where the context of a real existence dissolves into a big plasma of chances and chaos like in dreams, like my obsession with the existential question and the awareness of human limits... Franco Donaggio

123

THE NIAGARA OF OUR PRESENT TIME by Roberto Mutti

Silent but able to evoke sounds and noises, static but able to reproduce movement, photography has struck everybody’s imagination since its very beginning – even its detractors’ imagination, who were actually very numerous by then – and this because photography knew how to use a really effective weapon: wonder. Initially it was obviously appreciated for its new and highly imaginative procedure, but soon the public attention focused on the results that more and more skilful authors were able to attain. If portrait still remained in that private sphere which had already characterised painting portraiture – in fact the purchasers used to link the photographer to the person portrayed – things were very different with urban or natural landscape photography. In fact, the latter aimed at capturing a wider public, that is people who already knew those places photographed and who first got to know them through the photographic prints. The absolute sharpness and precision of daguerreotypes conveyed a flavour of authenticity, while the long exposures needed transmitted to the image something indeterminate. There are plenty of examples to cite but, among them, we have chosen one which we consider particularly intriguing because it was carried out in one of those places where man stops spellbound to look at the sublime beauty of the wilderness. We are speaking of a daguerreotype shot in 1853 by Platt D. Babbitt who was given, right that year, the exclusive authorisation to portray the Niagara Falls from the north-American side. The image frames an absolutely unconventional overall sight: here the author chooses to grant the falls a portion of central space but at the same time to let the sky, the vegetation, the bank on the foreground be visible too. On the bank there are one man and four women standing who turn their back to the camera and are obviously enchanted before that stunning landscape. We know that Babbitt actually specialised in that kind of shooting: he would wait for tourists to prepare for the sitting, then would shoot without them realising, and then would propose them his photos which were inevitably purchased. We are not interested in the commercial aspect, but in the photographic composition: and it was exactly this working methodology to urge the photographer to study a shooting style particularly focused on the relationship between the grandeur of nature and the small sizes of people who, however, always cover a key role in the overall shooting context. All the protagonists of these scene seem to possess the precise awareness of being men and women of their time, both proud of the progress in science and technique and also sensitive lovers of the beauty of landscape with which they wished to have a relationship of reciprocal empathy. What happened today to a photographer who may want to take up this subject and renew the relation linking man and nature? The technological, aesthetic and humanistic changes to be taken into account are so profound that we have to map out a completely different route. On this deep consciousness is based Franco Donaggio’s work, who in his brand-newseries Before the Dawn launches a riveting challenge, that is recovering the true sense of marvel which seem to have been lost due to routine, tiredness, disenchantment. After developing a really unique poetics by steering his photography into a rather surreal taste he is particularly keen on – as various works, from Metaportraits to Reflections prove – Donaggio operates with great insight inside this virtual universe created by digital imaging when it lets be guided by a project of a real expressive force. If in Urbis he had already investigated into the urban world and had transfigured it into a view where you could hear the architectural echoes of Constructivism and Rationalism, in Before the Dawn he goes a further step forward until creating his own structures of an urban landscape which seems to spring from fantasy or desire. Everything here becomes grand and charming: huge columns soar into a sky they seem to support, never-ending walls create scenes which define spaces; steep planes establish new unforeseen balances in a universe which seems suspended in an allusive void. Nothing we see is real even if our perception says it is:

124

we are just like those anonymous 19th century onlookers who found themselves before the show and the rumble of the falls, who would probably be reached by some sprays of water brought in by the wind. We, men of two centuries afterwards, in order to feel the same sensations must face a completely different world made of geometric constructions whose grandeur we do grasp but not quite its meaning: clouds trapped by net-like solids; lights going down from high above as thought they were thrown by spotlights hidden in a deep faraway blue sky; stairs running upstairs and downstairs and chasing after each other according to an impenetrable logic. The employ of a black and white of an extraordinary formal cleanness and a careful use of the digital techniques enhance the mysterious quality of these places which consequently become more and more theatrical. Franco Donaggio leads us into a world which remembers the science-fiction’s but which at the same time he seems to suggest that what we see we don’t have to look for it in other far off realms. In fact, he induce us to look at what surrounds us through new eyes: those gangways suspended inside a sort of a cupola; those squares built like labyrinths; those stone slabs one upon the other designing strange borders; those abysses attracting our curiosity: well, all that is our world. It’s the projection of the thoughts, hopes, fears and dreams of those small human beings who move about in those spaces and observe them, as we always tend to do, a bit scared and fascinated.

125

Before the Dawn #17

126

127

Before the Dawn #34

128

129

Before the Dawn #1 130

Before the Dawn #6 131

Before the Dawn #16

132

133

Before the Dawn #12

134

135

Before the Dawn #31 136

Before the Dawn #32 137

Before the Dawn #10

138

139

Before the Dawn #36

140

141

Before the Dawn #14

142

143

Before the Dawn #3

144

145

Before the Dawn #13

146

147

Before the Dawn #7

148

149

Before the Dawn #25 150

Before the Dawn #42

151

Before the Dawn #39

152

153

SCULPTURES

155

technical information Video art: Ideation and realization: © Franco Donaggio, 2015. Format: HD1080 p / CD blu-ray Dolby surround, edition of 5 Soundtrack © Red Rose Productions, 2015 Flavio Ibba / Paolo Fedreghini, Time 4’.

Prints: Sculptures is a project realized in 2015. This series is composed of 15 prints in limited editions: edition of 5, pigment prints in variable size, numbered and signed on the back

II artist’s proof.

156

THE GREAT WALL by Sandra Benvenuti

During his walks in Milan, Donaggio comes across the great facade of Bocconi University. The building is imposing and its architectural severity hypnotizes him. Cement walls stand out majestically pointing at the sky and convey to the artist sensations of great fascination and turmoil. Donaggio remembers: I was standing in front of this architectural work and I felt it was like an enormous wave suddenly freezed in slow motion, paralyzed. I realized I was the only spectator of a conceptual limit materialising in a huge wall, insurmountable for my eye and mind. The limit can be an obstacle with manifold facets. To common people the simple answer to the void of unresolved questions is religion, whereas to Donaggio the same limit is a concept to be studied and investigated through the art practise, so as to exorcise it and recompose it into various features with the hope of possibly pushing it even forward. The artist writes: I have created a new composition of the great wall using new features, new anamorphic forms and characters acting in my theatre of the unknown. With this new series of works Donaggio takes a new path of interior awareness and entitles it Sculptures. The grand stone wall, in the author’s composition, modifies itself. Thanks to digital tools the artist, like a sculptor, shapes the matter and creates ethereal structures as delicate as a young girl’s face or fearless like the general posing: he was produced assembling some elements of the new architectural complex of Piazza Gae Aulenti in Milan in the act of leading his army across the big terrain of life. In this project, like in his previous ones, the distinctive signature of the author is clear. His aim of climbing over the constraints of the limit is a concept that emerges in every single work.

157

SCULPTURES

158

The sense of limit often appears in my mental processes without notice, after that the flight of the dream has been stopped by an abrupt awakning. I idealize it like a large wall precluding the view which drags me into the shadowy perception of the unknowable. In this laborious condition springs inside me the need for re-elaborating the reality by searching anywhere else with the playful eagerness so much typical of a child. I have recreated the great wall with new appearances of anamorphic forms of characters that become actors in my theater of the unknown. Because of them, I surprisingly feel like a mocking puppeteer of unresolved questions animated like notes in a music score of a new passionate experience of play. Franco Donaggio

159

160

DAVID vs GOLIATH by Sandra Benvenuti

The metaphor of the great wall used by Donaggio to describe the meaning of human limit is very refined. He stops and observes it sharply, he inspects its details and shapes, he almost challenges it and melts so much with its limit that he becomes part of it. He analyses it with creative passion and deconstructs it until producing something different. Donaggio flies high with mighty, majestic wings that are so typical of those who have crossed many seas. And it is with his wings that he creates Sculptures! With his distinctive elegance he composes a dreamlike hymn through his images, and offers us an intriguing concept of reality where Homeric echoes arrive as strong as wind lashes; here, rhythm and silence alternate in a perfect balance. With his firm and expert hand, the artist sculpts a new reality that originates from a free mindset typical of those who have faced their fears and can handle them. With an accurate sharp technique similar to a surgeon’s scalpel, Donaggio creates imaginative works which modify the meaning of everything; he produces strong, majestic, proud forms just like a dauntless general who is always on the front line to fight the fear of the unknown; you can sense the tension of a horse in battle; you seem to touch the tendons tensed up and hear the deafening echo of the swords unsheathed. Donaggio perfectly manages to catapult you into a terrain of war or make you dance with ethereal timeless mermaids. With absolute naturalness, the artist alternates moments of atavistic tension with otherworldly visions; here you keep an eye out to catch messages coming from other worlds, here you volunteer for being the first passenger in this fantastic alien spaceship, as long as it helps you comprehend. The author, once again, is able to bend photography in order to catapult you into an unreal world which is elegantly plausible, using a meticulous composition and the mature, innovative insight so typical of those who have researched, have seen the light and have demolished the great wall. An awesome work by Donaggio! A great David who has defeated Goliath with the stone of creativity!

161

Totem #4

162

163

Totem #1

164

165

Totem #5

166

167

Totem #3

168

169

The mirror

170

171

Visual architecture

172

173

The General

174

175

Pinocchio is crying

176

177

Totem #5 178

The soldier 179

War mask

180

181

Girl in love

182

183

Transcendence machine

184

185

Reunited souls

186

187

188

The parrot

189

BIOGRAPHY

Franco Donaggio Chioggia (Venice) Italy, 1958

Donaggio has been working as a photographer and artist in Milan since 1979. Since the early years of his professional career he has privileged and developed the technical research of photography in all its aspects, from darkroom to the studio of light and their endless aesthetic possibilities. Now he has reached a liberty of expression that allows him to stand out in the contemporary panorama of photography. In 1992 he is awarded the Pubblicità Italia prize for still life photography. In 1995 he carries out his first important fine art project entitled Metaportraits which in 1996 wins the first prize in the European Kodak Gold Award - section Portray - Donaggio always dedicates particular attention to auteur photography and starts close collaboration with Italian, European and American gallerists, among which is the Joel Soroka Gallery of Aspen which represents him in the United States and introduces him in the major international art photography events such as the AIPAD show, New York; Art Miami, Miami; Photo LA, Los Angeles and Art Fair, Chicago. Today Donaggio is fully devoted to art projects and is judged to be among the most original and appreciated Italian artists experimenting with the photographic medium. Donaggio has achieved several art projects, published in lots of magazines, exhibited in countless galleries and museums in Italy and abroad among the most recent: Manege Museum, Saint Petersburg; La Civitella Museum, Chieti; Forte di Bard, Valle d’Aosta; 54° Biennale di Venezia; CAMeC Center of Modern and Contemporary Art, La Spezia; Ducale Building, Genoa; Marliani Cicogna Museum, Busto Arsizio; Civic Museum, Chioggia; and others. His images are present in numerous public and private collections, including: Fendi collection, Saudi Royal Family, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Scavi Scaligeri Collection, collezione 3M, collezione Marcegaglia and many others. His works have been auctioned in several auction houses, among the latest: Finarte of Milan. In October 2014 Donaggio receives the acknowledgment from the Rotary Club Un Lavoro una Vita and in 2018 is awarded the international Career prize in Benevento. Donaggio has also been a Commissioner at IED – Istituto Europeo di Design – in Milan, visiting professor at Accademia of Brera in Milan, at the Istituto Italiano di Fotografia in Milan and at Cà Foscari University in Venice. https://www.francodonaggio.com

190

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Joel Soroka Gallery, Aspen U.S.A. Benham Gallery, Seattle U.S.A Manege Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia Civic Museum, Rovinj, Croatia Popular Museum, Pinguente, Croatia Melkweg Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France Galerie Doria, Paris, France Galerie Celal, Paris, France 54°International Art Exhibition of Venice, Italy National Museum of Science and Technology, Milano, Italy Fears Museum, Lecco, Italy La Civitella Museum, Chieti, Italy Civic Museum, Chioggia (Ve), Italy CAMeC Center of Modern and Contemporary Art, La Spezia, Italy Marliani Cicogna Museum, Busto Arsizio (Va), Italy Museum of Modern Art, Gazoldo degli Ippoliti, Mantova, Italy Montemartini Central Museum, Rome, Italy Maxima Gallery, Rome, Italy Castello Sforzesco, Sala Viscontea, Milan, Italy Valtellinese Credit Gallery, Milan, Italy Giureconsulti Building, Milan, Italy Castiglioni Building, Milan, Italy Cultural Center of Milan, Milan, Italy Spazio Tadini House Museum , Milan, Italy Lingotto, Turin, Italy Gondola Gallery, Venice, Italy Ducale Building, Genoa, Italy Priàmar Fortress, Savona, Italy Leone da Perego Building, Legnano (Mi), Italy Virgilio Carbonari Space, Seriate (Bg), Italy Pirola Building, Gorgonzola (Mi), Italy Forte di Bard, Valle d’Aosta, Italy Foscolo Building, Oderzo (Tv), Italy Palazzo Sertoli, Sondrio, Italy Palazzo San Domenico, Crema (Cr), Italy Palazzo Guinigi, Lucca, Italy Pomposa Abbey, Codigoro (Fe), Italy House of Ludovico Ariosto, Ferrara, Italy Vendermini Building, Forlì, Italy Candiani Cultural Center, Mestre (Ve), Italy Spazi espositivi di via Bertossi, Pordenone, Italy Gracco Museum, Pompei (Na), Italy Gallery of the French Cultural Center, Palermo, Italy

191

INDEX

Metaportraits, pag. 12-47

Station, pag. 48-81

Reflections, pag. 82-117

Before the Dawn, pag. 118-153

Sculptures, pag. 154-189

192

DIGGING UP CONFINES

ALCHIMIA Art Gallery 188 Main Street Freeport, ME 04032, U.S.A. Ph +1 207-749-8141

Printed in January 2022 No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form nor by digital or mechanical means without prior written authorization by the author’s copyright.