Home Shows FOTO_GRAFICA: i protagonisti della Mec Art


VV8artecontemporanea, presents "FOTO_GRAFICA: i protagonisti della mec-art", art beyond painting, through a selection of works by Gianni Bertini, Bruno Di Bello, Elio Mariani, Mimmo Rotella and Aldo Tagliaferro, realised with different techniques. 

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Thursday 28 April 2022 at 6 p.m. at the Gallery premises in via dell'Aquila, 6/ca Reggio Emilia.

"PHOTO_GRAPHIC: the protagonists of mec-art" focuses on the visual and sociological research of contemporary communication, where art, at the height of its technical reproducibility, becomes democratic, massified, and where the relations between painting and photography take on new paths of an experimental nature.

Central to the exhibition project is the highlighting of the reflection on the concept of the image of art perceived in contemporary society, where works are not simply mechanically reproducible, but sometimes are not even considered socially relevant as an effective sign of mass culture. The contemporary image thus runs the risk of losing its communicative capacity while retaining an epidermically aesthetic value, especially when realised using the contemporary means available such as photography.

Pierre Restany, one of the main theorists and critics of mec-art, claims that "the ambition of the artistic movement was to assume the modernity of the image in an era without pictorial or falsely aestheticising complexes. That is, mec-art introduced the modern structure of the image into the field of art, creating a language of synthesis based on the photomechanical structure of mass visual language.

Rather than the artistic interest in the reproducibility of the work, the exponents focused on the use of new techniques to process images, techniques that led to the exploration of alternative forms of creation, without taking refuge in an idealised historicism or denying their artistic function.

It is on the concept of the 'indestructibility' of the work of art - we could say moral rather than actual - that the mec-artists focus their reflection: in the ability to elevate the communicative scope of a moment, of a ritual, of a fragment of the world around them; to narrate the reality of mass communication by offering the spectator a critical vision of the phenomenon.

The exhibition "FOTO_GRAFICA: i protagonisti della mec-art", will be open from 28 April to 12 June 2022, from Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4.30 p.m. to 7.30 p.m., or by appointment.