Book2 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 Roberto Mutti Cristina Franzoni Tobia Donà Silvia Walsh PHOTO CREDITS ©Franco Donaggio TEXTS CREDITS ©The authors ART DIRECTOR Franco Donaggio TRANSLATIONS Cristina Franzoni THANKS Monica Beri / Alchimia Gallery Giampiero Bonacini Sandra Benvenuti Giovanna Lacedra Arianna Grimoldi

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 Sediments. 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 and 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

1997 2017 Escapes Urbis The Wood of Thought Morpheus’ Space Sediments

ESCAPES

Technical information

Escapes was created in 1997. This series includes 16 images in limited edition: edition of 5 chromogenic prints on metallic paper 16x20 inch. numbered and signed on the back. II artist’s proof.

*** The work has been created by cutting out paper outlines by hand overlapped on a white opaline back-lit monitor and then photographed with a large format film. The image obtained has been subsequently scanned and colored through a digital intervention.

THE MATTER OF TALE by Sandra Benvenuti

Escapes represents the passage that Donaggio undertakes from the precise and aseptic image of the advertising world, to fine art. The author produces a series of images where everything, from scenography to the subject is invented, planned and executed in every single detail. The artist, starting from a A4 sheet of paper, engraves stories of life where everything is made of paper. The choice of utilising this material represents the author’s intention of conveying a sense of vulnerability, almost of precarity of an hypothetical daily existence. With this mood Donaggio cuts out characters, creates articulated environments and composes Escapes. This new project is for the author an escape from the professional work he has experienced so far – that is why he chose that title – The technical development is long and complex: the artist begins with standard white sheets of paper that are subsequently incised by hand and then back-lit. Then he photographs the paper cuts created with sinuous forms which are also amusing or sarcastic, like the couple of lovers where the woman kisses passionately his beloved man who has a cynical look; or like the car driver who seems to have a morbid relationship with his vehicle. With the advent of digital photography, the author exploits this new media to color the paper outlines that he had already photographed a few years before, thus giving them the magic that the whole work expresses. The perfect use of the color becomes an important factor as it underlines the emotional feature of each work.

ESCAPES

The project Escapes represents my technical migration towards the new medium of digital photography. I have always thought that a successful result is more important than the way to obtain it; in fact, the passage from darkroom to white room has improved and made the creative flux of my work lighter. Escapes expresses a pause in the entirety of my photographic work; it is perhaps my personal and modest homage to the legendary vanguards of the early 20th century, but also my personal love for the world of art graphics and sculpture. During those years I was going through a rich period of new discoveries, training and awareness of new potentialities. Manual skill was an important component of my experimentation. To create the graphic bases of each work belonging to Escapes – thanks to my precedent experience with the Metaportraits project – I have cut out A4 paper sheets over an opaline back-lit glass and created aesthetic histories and synergies consecrated by the film and the scanner.

Franco Donaggio

ESCAPES by Cristina Franzoni

Escapes well describes Franco Donaggio’s desire of escaping – although momentarily – from the world of advertising, of fashion and of the works on commission which have had such an important part in his art career, with the aim of giving free vent to his raring creativity. An act of benevolent rebellion, a primary longing for playing, that sort of lightheartedness that you give yourself when – for once – you are not obsessed with strict obligations or pressing deadlines. This series is different from the previous ones both in the materials and in the technique and the format. The A4 sheet of paper becomes the base on which the author creates his ingenious scenic designs inhabited by figures that are cut out, carved, photographed, drawn and back-lit. Certainly an artist like Donaggio never expresses himself through one technique only. His rainbow-like inspiration draws from several art forms and it always amazes, amuses and tickles us. In his works nothing is obvious, easy or ready for consumption. From the rear of his creative action what emerges are dreamed stories, atavistic remembrances, shreds of previous works, flashes of visionary fantasies, futuristic hints, even previsions at the dawn of doomsday. All these elements of pictoric and photographic forms and colours, both analog and digital blend, interlock or simply co-exist and give birth to paintings echoing the inventions of Fortunato Depero, Pablo Picass but also of Italo Calvino - whose Invisible Cities - seem to anticipate the formidable cities of our author. In Escapes the wizard and director Donaggio stage characters that are humans but not so much, entrapped in urban merciless contexts where skyscrapers are almost vomited by small gangly and lonely creatures; where the claustrophobic cabin of a car is perceived by the alienated driver as the only possible relief; where colored confetti cease to live in happy stories and become ornamental background of surreal atmosphere of delirium. In the stories of Escape the artist’s narration assumes a key role, and lives along the end of an unlimited skein of creativity stretched out towards the future.

Epochal entry

Soul on the move

The bull and the bullfighter

The doubt

The lovers

Forms in backlight

Pinocchio

Passion

Injured hand

Possession

Town sickness

Signs of color

Useless construction

Politician before a mirror

Decomposition of a newspaper

Trick of time

URBIS

Technical information Urbis was created between 2003 and 2006. This series includes 40 images in limited edition: edition of 10, pigment prints 16x20 inch. numbered and signed on the back. edition of 10, pigment prints 30x41 inch. numbered and signed on the back. II artist’s proof.

YELL OF COLORS by Sandra Benvenuti

With a nearly irrational impulse, Donaggio cuts out the details that form his visual story resembling a tailor working on an eccentric dress. Through this spontaneous, almost mechanical act, the author nourishes his incessant experimentation. The instinctive cutting outs – rough clippings – selected by the artist give the subject a new air: let us consider – for example – the cyclist with his face covered, riding through sinister smoke stacks along an urban route with elegant solemnity; or the queues of people resembling replicants while forming a human roped party for the protection of a Duomo which is being restored. To create this work the artist has chosen the density of discordant colours – the ones that he defines: a yell of colors – thus emphasizing the sensation of the noise of an overcrowded space by employing shapes that are sometimes messy. Milan is the city where Donaggio has lived much of his time and where he has grown intellectually. It is an effervescent, stimulating town where energy forges you. Yet, besides all this buzz, as the daily din fades out and you come back home, solitude awaits you behind the corner. Urbis by Donaggio is exactly that. The descriptive objective of the project is that of recounting – using images – the daily life stories happening in the big city highlighting human desires or frailties, and feelings often hidden between colored nightmares and plays of shapes conjoining in bizarre and fascinating aesthetical synergies. The author strolls around the city with his camera and collects – like a harvester – details of every kind; he loves differentiating things, breaking them into pieces, separating all the elements that form the city and then re-compose them like in a puzzle, but with other meanings. In his projects there is not only one proposition but many others, connecting. The artist’s work lives at the border between photography and other types of art including sculpture, painting and music, always placing itself in a territory which is different. That of Donaggio is a kind of photography that fools risk, that seeks the unusual and the eccentric. This allows him to cross the image totally and reach intimate, authentic propositions.

URBIS

I see the metropolis like a big room for playing, a place rich in aesthetic contexts to be re-invented with the perception of an intimate rebirth. Through my year-long experience, the digital medium becomes the compass of a new route of knowledge, the metaphor of the oar that pushes me gently to sail among sounds, forms, colors towards the new frontiers of creation, imbued with a new spirit of liberty! Franco Donaggio

THE VISIBLE CITIES BY FRANCO DONAGGIO by Roberto Mutti

Whenever photography deals with the topic of urban landscape, it is as though it would illustrate the town trough a detailed realistic description of its street, squares and buildings. The two possible results of this vision are on the one hand, a romantic taste for atmospheres, on the other a deep study of the architectural texture. And yet, cities are far more than what they appear, to be, as it is duly stated by the poets who have sung them, by the writers who have set in them their stories, by the painters who have depicted them, by the designers who have imagined them, and sometimes by the inhabitants who have lived them. All this has not passed unnoticed by Franco Donaggio, an artist able to use the flexibility of photography to built a different world, rich in fantasy and charm just like the one cherished by the innovative spirit sprouting from such Historic Avant-garde moviments like Futurism, Constructivism and Surrealism. We spot a sense of lightness in the way the Italian photographer faces the confused and noisy reality of a town. And it is thanks to this lightness that he builds structures as articulated and complex as thoughts, daring compositions as dreams. The theads of light create weaves standing out in the sky like hieroglyphics; the traffic-lights seem to multiply their glows with no apparent reason; the chimneys make way for a cyclist silhouette riding forward like an ancient hero. The façade of a house, the shadow of a building, the perplexed look of a statue emerge unexpected because Donaggio transforms them into surfaces, forms and shapes boasting a mysterious fascination: there are men who are motionless as though they were cut from paper and then scattered like puppets inside the scene, and there are some elements – the lamps of street lighting, the manhole covers, the trolley-car rails – which acquire instead a sort of dynamism giving them an interior unexpected liveliness. The photographer does not indulge in illustrating the city, he rather investigates its deeper character which only the imagination can grasp. It is as though he wished to take us by hand and lead us up to the thresholds of its vision, where the scaffoldins of the restoration works happen to be rising up towers, whilst the curtains covering the building facades become screens showing the images of a past which we cannot forget. In fact, as Franco Donaggio underlaines in this gorgeous photographic series, in a city there are always the signs of a past time but also the anticipation of what will be.

Evolution

Outline of a building

Temporal Interference

Souls

Ego

Stazione #15

Metamorphosis 66

Precarious balances 67

Town sunset

City angel

Geometry of the path

Travel remembrances

Forgotten knight

New York #3

New York 79

Fantasy of manholes

THE WOOD OF

THOUGHT

Technical information

The Wood of Thought was created between 2009 and 2017. This series includes 44 images in limited edition: edition of 5, pigment prints 12x16 inch. numbered and signed on the back. II artist’s proof.

MEDITATIONS AND FAIRY TALES by Sandra Benvenuti

In Donaggio’s view the mountains are a place where you can let down your guard and relax. There’s no metropolitan chaos here. According to the author, the geographical verticality of their territories is always food for thought as well as an invitation to meditation. Everything takes on an imaginative role in Donaggio’s stories and color shapes: corn leaves become daring stakeout sentinels, whereas other elements whisper and hug at sunset; the snow entrapped in shrubs assumes forms of animals. Big snowballs modelled by the wind on picket fences look like disquieting human faces. The Wood of Thought represents a flyby among natural beauties and fairy places, the same locations re-echoed by the artist in his past remembrances as a child, when he used to be enchanted by the stories of princes and witches described by the multi-colored pictures that accompanied the tales. Today, he offers us – through his works – those very stories. With his magical images of unbridled wildlife Donaggio transports us – like a Virgil of Beauty – across a world of pureness and silence giving us the sensation of being lost in the reflection of his child’s world, fantastically surviving in maturity.

THE WOOD OF

THOUGHT

The Wood of Thought is the expression of my hymn to nature, my personal vision on the concept of the magical link between the earth and the sky. In these places, the snow falls with its saving grace, bringing its silences, its smells, and its thousand shapes which inspire the mind and the search for mystery. I cross and photograph spaces of magnificence, I live intensively the miracle of vision. I have the serene sensation of collecting presents that I will give to others… Franco Donaggio

THE WOOD OF THOUGHT by Tobia Donà

Franco Donaggio’s works reveal themselves by cycles. A challenge to the expression of inner meanings between materiality and spirit, which is always fulfilled differently. Donaggio does not chase his photographs, he is not connected to them, he does not feed them, he does not seize them: he lets them free. Free to stay. This is his great moral peculiarity. You can see this in Metaportraits, Station, Urbis, Reflections, Before the Dawn. But also in every new cycle he creates, an incessant flow continuously evolving until producing a vast, fantastic landscape between clarity and mystery. Collected works ranging from the early lights of daybreak to the last glare of sunset. This is Franco Donaggio’s Wood of Thought. We don’t know exactly where it is. Yet, we might cross it. However, the important thing is that Donaggio has seen it for us. And it is not something clearly visible: a forest, some snow. These are photographs that have nothing to do with an oleographic representation of nature. Before our eyes a metaphor unravels, an echo, an otherworldly trumpet blast ready to wake up our ancestors; it shows us a world that has not changed and that it has always been before our eyes, even before our birth, eternal yet unknown. Donaggio focuses our eye on the relationship that has connected it to the man since his origin. It is an artifice, a mise-en-scene, since there is nothing inside us that is more natural than Culture, every gesture and every action performed by ourselves and aimed at modifying the reality derives from knowledge and understanding. To which extent does this relationship become stratagem, mystification? What inside us is nature and what artifice? These photographs do not answer these questions. Yet, on the snowy surfaces threatened by a sky full of prophecies streaked with lights and about to darken, you can clearly read what pushes us forward, even when the snow is so high that it covers our knees. An ardent lymph that traverses time. The inexhaustible creative breath that allows us to see beyond and to feel deeper inside us.

The solitary man

Winter face

The sentinels

Forms in the cold

Sunset

Reflections #43 The sphynx is watching me 100

Snow creature 101

Sign along the path

102

103

Metamorphosis #1 104

Metamorphosis #2 105

Christmas night

106

107

Passage

108

109

The witch’s shadow

110

111

Two souls

112

The guardian of the path

113

Sleeping passage

114

115

Abandonment

116

117

MORPHEUS’ SPACES

119

Technical information

Morpheus’ Spaces was created between 2013 and 2014. This series includes 23 images in limited edition: edition of 10, pigment prints in variable format, numbered and signed on the back.

II artist’s proof.

120

SURREAL SPACES by Sandra Benvenuti

Franco Donaggio’s studio is based in a central, effervescent district of the city of Milan. On those days in the area overlooking the artist’s studio a real urban revolution actually started. In fact, this area reinvents itself, new businesses are established, and from a trade center it rapidly turns into one of the trendiest places in town. The construction of the building called Bosco verticale – designed by the architect Stefano Boeri – is eventually started as well as many other important building complexes, including the new headquarters of the Lombardy Region Palace. Donaggio’s working studio – which he calls the think tank – is also a place for meetings and conviviality. Here suppers are organized with artists and friends, exhibitions and roundtables are set up with experts and art lovers. One day a gallery owner calls in and invites Franco to produce some photographs about the female nude for an editorial project together with other preeminent artists. It is a new theme for Franco and he is intrigued. The gallery owner challenges Donaggio and he accepts enthusiastically. As usual, the author begins with the phase of pre-visualization of the project. He plans situations and postures and prepares sketches in pencil illustrating how to photograph the subject and in which location to place it. He works with two professional models: Arianna Grimoldi and Giovanna Lacedra and both establish a perfect relationship with him. The Woman is a fundamental character for Donaggio: not only is she a muse but also a life giver. The artist often uses the expression: The woman is a house to man. So planning to put the female figure into an urban environment which is about to come to life is an immediate natural choice. The author idealizes the woman as a life creator; she symbolizes the savior in a context defined by the author as a world consumed by the oblivion of human values. Donaggio’s woman is fearless, ascetic and mysterious. The first image realized for the project Morpheus’ Spaces, well describes the traits of the whole corpus of works; she represents a courageous amazon leading a huge Cerberus-ship greedy for waves; holding the long leather straps tied at the top of the prow, she drives among restless breakers through the surreal worlds of the artist.

121

MORPHEUS’ SPACES

122

In my job, crossing over the real world is a common practise. I use photography to give a face to my hidden thoughts waiting to be unveiled. This project started with the construction of a totality made of fragments of reality in a scenographic synergy interlaced with the illogicity of dream around the splendour of feminine physicity. These worlds are dominated by a woman protagonist. She animates my stories with her role of saviour of an almost lost world consumed by the oblivion of human values that belongs to the past. I love to think that, unlike the story of Adam and Eve, that same woman does not offer herman the apple of sin, but the one of salvation.

123

124

THE CHARM OF MYTH by Roberto Mutti

You just need to find a place far away from people, lights, noises and then stare at the night sky in silence to be overwhelmed by a strange feeling blending anxiety and fascination for mystery. This is an intelligent way to get in touch with our shrewder ancestors who used the audacity of thought in order to study the hidden parts of reality in search for its more authentic essence. The intimate nature of things likes hiding itself so wrote Heraclitus who was called by his contemporaries skoteinòs, that is the obscure, because he was already aware that knowledge is a long process where reason and mystery intertwine in a winding path which is also rich in charm. We are surprised in knowing that those very words, written in the 6th century BC and coming from a society – that of the island of Samo – which was so simple from an economic and social point of view, are now perfectly sharable. At the center of our cognitive path we are used to pay attention not to the noble reason but to the reasonability, namely its simpler version. As a consequence, we have entrusted the world of art to guide us into the discovery of what intrigues us most, whether it is the night sky standing above us or the maze of thoughts crossing our mind. The ancient people would face all that by resorting to the myth, a kind of narration which proposes a fundamental truth behind the semblace of a fairy tale: so the most attentive readers were challenged to investigate the several hints so as to finally get to the key meaning of the message. So the Sphinx who confronts herself with Oedipus is the symbol of the enigma which has to be solved; the Arianna’s thread stands for the intelligence able to defeat brutality, while the Orpheus’s challenge enhances the sublime beauty of art, being the only thing capable of facing death and – almost – defeating it. For the contemporaries, instead, the images tell more than the words and the few authors who can skillfully create them are consequently to be praised. The Morpheus’ Spaces, the latest work by Franco Donaggio, has got all the characteristics to be defined a myth carried out in a photographic form, even because just in its title it evokes one of the most charming divinity of the ancient Greek culture who could take on the exterior look of real individuals, objects, landscapes and even sensations dreamt by men. So a strong, steadfast relationship between myth and dream was created and this is also underlined by the fact that Morpheus was one of Hypnos’ son and that he used to touch lightly the eyelids of sleeping people with poppy petals in order to create images. It is exactly this dimension into which Donaggio accompanies us asking us to let be transported by sensations and by the marvel so as to make us aware of the strong relation linking reality and imagination. He soon highlights this through a photo of great power depicting the solemnity of a ship whose bow cuts through water creating grand frothy waves and the vigor of the woman steering it by firmly seizing long leather straps. Soon you will understand why it is not by chance that the ship flanks rise like cement walls: the architecture, especially the most audacious and therefore prepared to any possible challenge, is not only the environment where everything is set, but a real protagonist of a world where the sensual softness of a wonderful female body is matched with the sharp lines of the buildings, blends with the series of windows which seem to embrace it, stands out against the sky so as to challenge it. Then, all of a sudden, the woman emerges into a liquid space which coagulates around her and at this point it becomes inevitable thinking about another Morpheus, protagonist of Matrix by Lana and Andy Wachowski, which isn’t perhaps a simple sciencefiction film, but an open window to a possible world. From now on the journey actually starts, the female figure hovers in the air, fights with the fire, rests on a seat, faces a giant outline of the moon where maybe there is a special space – just like Ludovico Ariosto suggested – where the ampoules containing the sense of lovers are kept.

125

The ship

126

127

Adam and Eve

128

129

Extreme question

130

131

Human flower

132

133

The judgement

134

135

The sisters

136

137

The muse #2

138

The muse #1

139

Landescape borderland

140

Sunset ascent

141

La Rossa

142

143

Arianna

144

145

Constructivist bath

146

147

La femme Parisienne

148

149

The wall of desire

150

The figurehead’s chant

151

Restart

152

153

SEDIMENTS

155

Technical information

Sediments was created between 2012 and 2017. This series includes 30 images in limited edition: edition of 3, pigment prints 24x24 inch. numbered and signed on the back. edition of 3, pigment prints 48x48 inch. numbered and signed on the back. II artist’s proof.

156

THE RETURN by Sandra Benvenuti

Milan is the city where Franco Donaggio lives and works. It is the metropolis that has given him the liberty of growing both intellectually and professionally for over fourty years; yet, he feels caged in now. He misses the perfume of the sea, the clear sky, the echoes of past time. This desire has represented for Donaggio the change towards a new start: coming back home. He returns to Chioggia – his town of birth – more and more often, he retraces the path of recollection with the experience of a mature man armed with his inseparable camera; he observes colored houses reflecting on the water of the canals, disused shipyards and abandoned strings of mussels; he walks along beaches only inhabited by shabby objects transported by the sea. The silence, the sharp smell of shallow waters, the aura of abandoned things on desolate water edges, all this removes the veil of time and brings to life again fragments of past experienced life. Sediments is the example of how the artist’s versatility knows no limits. With this work Donaggio starts a new visual voyage. The object, rather than the human figure, is the core of his reflections. In the hectic and uncessant research for new ways of representing unusual visions of the world, the artist studies the possibility of a mobility within the composition starting from the position of the elements and offering other possibilities of life to abandoned things. Starting from a seen reality, the author amplifies the imaginative potentialities and creates not only worlds and landscapes sourcing from the fantastic, he also clarifies this contradiction on a formal level: he composes with different materials bizarre characters like the portrait of an old fisherman, he transforms a plastic cloth into a mocking animal-like figure, he unveils the hidden soul of a motionless silent world offering, before our eyes, wonderful underwater worlds. These works invite the viewers to enter a true analytical process which is by no means direct; on the contrary, it is difficult to grasp its wholeness at first sight in a perennial oscillation between the intimate introspection, the abstraction, the representativeness between symbolism and narration. With this work properly entitled Sediments, the author seems to pay a visual homage to the fundamental postulate by Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier: nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything changes!

157

SEDIMENTS

158

Sediments is the experience of vision, an overlapping of matter that projects me into my past with the maturity of the present time. I have photographed things which are no more useful, adrift in water and in time and, with them, my first wonders and fears along a lifeline carved in my place of origin a long time ago. These visions of remembrance are like the snow falling with no wind, which accumulates in thick layers able to take control of my time. Franco Donaggio

159

160

THE DANCE OF OBLIVON by Silvia Walsh

As a protagonist of its scenarios, the wind flies above the water edge like a sculptor playing with the sand, and with the complicity of the sea it brings to surface some remains of worn-out objects which seem to look at the sky like sleeping faces covered with a thin layer of sand reminding us of overlapping layers of time. Just like the snow falling in different moments. In these weighty places of sea breezes and perfumes of floating seaweeds, Donaggio happens to reflect on his story’s thread. With his usual poetics, the artist digs up into the matter of time and finds in the watercourse of his past some fragments of life fallen into forgetfulness, experienced emotions, forgotten fragrances. With naturalness the artist turns all this into images and realizes a new project called – not coincidentally – Sediments. Thanks to his geniality he re-evaluates the matter and underlines the intrinsic character of the things abandoned on the water edge thus overturning their potential aesthetic language. The artist transforms objects and things into visions: a polibox used by fishmongers becomes a redundant Tower of Babel and a plastic cloth is now a spouse’s veil; the sea waves lapping the shallows full of seaweed reawakens Neptune; abandoned strings of mussels burst out crying, a black cry. Donaggio’s artworks are not only photographic compositions, but concepts of thought that remind me of visions of pupas that in their final stage become butterflies… Sediments is the result of a constant in-depth art experimentation which proves, once again, the visionary and constructivist authenticity of the artist. I idealize Donaggio’s worlds like surreal stages where common worn-out objects become brilliant interpreters in ever-changing scenarios, protagonists of visions that I would define entries for a third dimension. Franco Donaggio is a traveller, his journey has started since his very childhood when he left his sea, his lagoon with its shallows, his sailing with friends. First for his studies, then to undertake his professional path in the big city. And from there, to Europe and North America. Today, after some decades, the artist returns to the land of his origins with the heart of a fulfilled man and of a poet who still has the vivid curiosity so typical of the eternal investigator he used to be as a young man. I was particularly struck by one of Franco’s concepts that I found especially sharp: My photography means giving shape to dreams, to visions and matter just like the clay of a sculptor; to me the photo is like the brick that – together with others – forms my sense of mystery. I think that this view is a possible lever of Archimedes to deeply comprehend the work of this versatile artist who – with Sediments – conveys not only the umpteenth mocking message to the fleeting time, but also a dense and generous contribution to our desire of seeing beyond.

161

The Babel tower

162

163

Sea recollections

164

165

Mirage #5

166

167

Plastic flight

168

169

Mirage #1

170

171

Goliath

172

Portrait of an old fisherman

173

Sea bottom

174

Mirage #2

175

REM phase

176

177

Black cry

178

179

Mimicries

180

181

Recollections

182

183

Neptune’s awakening

184

185

Free flight

186

Mirage #4

187

Underworld’s door

188

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

Escapes, pag. 12-47

Urbis, pag. 48-81

The Wood of Thought, pag. 82-117

Morpheus’ Spaces, pag. 118-153

Sediments, 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.