A few days before the start of a spring still latent in the air, Studio G7 opened the exhibition In superficie. Appunti sulla natura (On the Surface. Notes on Nature), the first solo exhibition in the Bologna gallery of the Emilian photographer who has made the detailed rendering of the visual impressions produced by the lability of the landscape the fulcrum of her poetics. The gallery’s public had already had the opportunity to meet Paola De Pietri (Reggio Emilia 1960) in 2020 together with Giulia Dall’Olio, on the occasion of the two-person exhibition Per ogni estatico istante, in which some black and white shots pertaining to the project Questa Pianura (2004, 2014-17) evoked a sensitive portrait of the Po Valley.
Paola De Pietri, “In superficie. Appunti sulla natura”, installation vie wat Galleria Studio G7, courtesy Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
Her native countryside, where she still lives (but also other rural settings in Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Lombardy), were auscultated in that series in their transformations, capturing in the visible characteristics of the environment the traces of the transition from a rural economy, in which men, plants and animals were in tune with the seasons, to industrialization and the subsequent abandonment of farmhouses no longer in use. In those shots taken in analog with the optical bench, images of trees or ruined farmhouses isolated and shrouded in fog appeared as archaeological finds of an extinct ecosystem (natural, social, economic and productive), enigmatic and aphonic like the words of an obsolete language that had become indecipherable. That work required long times, those of prolonged exposure to refine the detail even from afar, those of the growth of trees and the degradation of architecture, but also those necessary for the observer to detect the infinitesimal shades of gray that never reach absolute black or white. As the title foreshadows, however, the shots now on display address nature with a complementary approach, proposing a sequence of instantaneous natural impressions that cannot be immediately traced back to an organized image, each of which unexpectedly identifies a fleeting but unmistakable alternative superstructure.
Paola De Pietri, “Senza titolo,” 2024, inkjet print on cotton paper, diptych, cm 69,3 x 86,4, courtesy Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
There is no longer, therefore, the horizon, the gravity center of the image to which its decoding into “landscape” is attributed, but a close-up look immersed in the object of vision, which is fragmentary but at the same time all-encompassing. Whether it is the shadow of some leaves on the ground, bare branches silhouetted against the snow, a dusty flowery meadow or a tuft of grass and daisies, these images propose a subtle shift in the way of perceiving things, sharpening some visual intuitions that normally remain under the radar. The landscape, captured at different degrees of proximity, is in fact interpreted not as a space inhabited by solitary emblematic presences, but as a changing texture of which a temporary modification is fixed from time to time. This cycle, which has been transversal to the more structured projects for thirty years, is based on an in-depth observation of the surface of things that becomes a way of knowing reality: not therefore distanced contemplation, but the search for an experience that aspires to involve the other senses almost by irradiation.
Paola De Pietri, “Senza titolo”, 2024, inkjet print on cotton paper, diptych, cm 52,5, x 35 each, courtesy Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
None of the artist’s works is the visible result of an a priori planning, but all arise from a continuous dialogue with reality aimed at demonstrating how the landscape is anything but static, but rather a dimension in continuous movement in which the vision and its object modify and shape each other. If De Pietri’s most openly “landscape” photos almost always include a horizon inclusive of man’s footprints as an agent of transformation of what surrounds him, here the field of vision becomes narrower and nature is approached with an intimate gaze, exempted from the social and historical implications of the landscape, but at the same time focused on the perception of change. Here the images record small events intercepted by the artist’s gaze during her walks, such as the light that reshapes the volumes of a snowdrift making it resemble a cloud, enhanced as micro-lightnings in which the tactility evoked by the sensitive atmospheric texture of the image determines the surface and, consequently, the distinctive characteristics of things. Some shots from this cycle, entitled Appunti to underline its inclusive and open nature, had already been exhibited in 2001 in Bologna at Villa delle Rose in a group show, where each of the five rooms reserved for her work was dedicated to a specific natural event, such as a flood or the horizon fading into fog.
Paola De Pietri, “Senza titolo”, 2024, inkjet print on cotton paper, cm 40, 5x 27, courtesy Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
Almost 25 years later, the solo show at Studio G7 presents the most recent results of this meditation on the photographic image, which for the artist is never truly superimposable on reality but always a vehicle for a perspective in which an interpretation and a subjective point of view are inscribed. The new small-format prints punctuate the space of the gallery, punctuating its white walls from different positions and heights, restoring in their convergence the intuition on the vibrant mutability of natural elements at the origin of the mental process that led the artist to the project. Black and white shots, for the most part, alternate with localized epiphanies of color that interrupt the continuum of perception with a visual gap that becomes conceptual, if we think of the installation as a unitary environment evoked by fragments that are inconsistent with the logic of the landscape. The viewer is therefore invited by the artist on a sensorial walk among the exciting apparitions generated by the encounter between her minimal gaze on reality and her mastery of the photographic medium, which allows her to find the most suitable technique each time to make evident visual emergencies that are little more than latent.
Paola De Pietri, “Senza titolo”, 2024, inkjet print on cotton paper, cm 40,5 x 27; “Senza titolo”, 2024, inkjet print on cotton paper, cm 40,5 x 27, courtesy Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
For example, the selective focus used in the diptych Untitled (2024) depicting a tilted aerial view of a meadow in which the lens focuses on a wavy border line between a crowded array of yellow rapeseed flowers and a white one of daisies, which flows from one image to the other as if it were a snake. Or the other black and white diptych with two vertical views of the profile of a farmhouse immersed in wild grass, where the shot makes an almost abstract cut to the image, separating its elements. And again a fragment of meadow in which the mobile depth of the slightly curved, blurred blades of grass suggests the illusion of having just caressed them with the hand, while the poppies left out of focus pulse like light bulbs emerging from the ground. Or, finally, the shadow of a blade of grass that can be seen in the diptych displayed outside the exhibition in the gallery’s studio, where the cement grain that welcomes it in the shot, in focus in every roughness, seems to absorb it like porous paper does with watercolour. Moving your gaze from one image to another, you have the impression of leafing through the pages of a seasonal diary marked by the cyclical mutations of nature, always the same but infinitely varied in their particular manifestations, if your attention is directed to detect how light shapes things by estranging itself from the syntax of the landscape.
Info:
Paola De Pietri. In superficie. Appunti sulla natura
03/04 – 21/06/2025
Galleria Studio G7
Via Val d’Aposa 4a – Bologna
www.galleriastudiog7.it
Graduated in art history at DAMS in Bologna, city where she continued to live and work, she specialized in Siena with Enrico Crispolti. Curious and attentive to the becoming of the contemporary, she believes in the power of art to make life more interesting and she loves to explore its latest trends through dialogue with artists, curators and gallery owners. She considers writing a form of reasoning and analysis that reconstructs the connection between the artist’s creative path and the surrounding context.
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