Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting
From December 2nd, at 12:00 PM to December 16th, 2021, at 12:00 PM.
Online Viewing Room on Artsy
Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is proud to present an OVR dedicated to Andrea Tonellotto’s inquiry on architectural and urban issues reinterpreted through a new use of the polaroid medium. On this occasion, we are happy to feature a selection of works that are part of the “London Eye” series, (shot in London from 2017 to 2019) and the “Rationalism” series, taken through the years 2010 to 2020 in Italian cities typically identified by architecture dating back to the 1930s.
As a self-taught photographer, over the years Andrea Tonellotto has developed an original inquiry based on a very intensive study of the polaroid medium, specifically in his most recent SX-70 development. Tonellotto has experimented with that medium’s natural chemistry that can turn a small format image, such as a polaroid, into a very responsive mirror of reality, which constantly changes its resulting colors according to mutations in the light and in the environment’s temperature. By applying an unusually small-size medium to the classical issues of architecture and urban landscape, Tonellotto fragments his vision by reuniting the polaroids into a mosaic format. This comes accompanied by a reflection on the use of polaroid photography as a mosaic form which, first conceived by David Hockney, now strives for new meaning. Far from simply combining different portions of space into a wider area, compositions by Andrea Tonellotto are process-based, made by the act of capturing the same portions of space in different moments of time. Inspired by a strong compositional sense, repetitions, and variations, his mosaics display a collection of a series of emotions over a landscape, originating from his reflection on the same excerpt of the same landscape. In his abstract mosaics, color becomes the key to creating a symphony of emotions seen within its development through time and space.
For Tonellotto, London is the quintessential metropolitan city. In “London Eye,” his recurring theme of fragments of roofs and graffiti has built up imagery fully enriched with pop culture references, recreating the dynamism of a town and its fast-paced rhythm. In his “Rationalism” series, the photographer merges a visual recollection of the Enlightenment’s Ideal Cities with modern solitudes inhabiting classical De Chirico paintings. These inspirational sources are the basic tools Tonellotto uses to create mosaics of classical compositional beauty in which harmonic stillness conveys a deep sentiment of peace and solitude.