Antonella Gandini

Born in 1958, she lives in Monzambano, Mantua. She graduated from the University of Verona, with a thesis on Aesthetics, she attends painting and graphic courses at the Cignaroli Academy. She was selected for the superior Drawing Course of the Antonio Ratti Foundation in Como, held by the artist Gerard Richter. Her work explores connection and language structures at the border between painting, photography and video art. She produced her first video Presenze, winner of the price Opera Prima Round 97, XVI Cineteca of Rimini. She increased her interest in photography, interpreting in an intimistic and personal way the connection image-representation. She curated the third Biennial of photography Reale instabile at the Contemporary Art Museum of Gazoldo degli Ippoliti (2007), and three editions of Book in the box for the State’s Archive of Mantua. In 2009, she set up the solo photographic exhibit Lunanera in Palazzo Te, Mantua; the next year Il silenzio dell’invisibile, at the Cultural Center Luigi di Sarro, Rome. She participates in several initiatives aimed towards the awareness on gender problems, and exhibitions: Mantova & Rosenheim, Stadtische Galerie, Rosenheim (2018), Bookworks, Studio Expurgamento, London, Visuali italiane, Roonee Gallery, Tokyo (2019).For the metamorphic aspect of her images and the explicit contamination of languages she was invited at the70°Premio Michetti, Attraversamenti fra arte e fotografia, Francavilla a Mare, Chieti,(2019). 

www.antonellagandini.it

A…Mare

My work progresses sometimes by design and other times randomly. The use
of “found” images, as it were, and the close bond with the instant, ephemeral
moment of the snapshot are essential elements of the experience.
Sometimes the refinement of an image lies in the sheer fascination inspired
by the vastness. Water is the vital element that throughout the millennia has
shaped rocks and sculpted the environment, leaving traces of its passage.
The portrayal of the image in our mind goes beyond the instant, it tests the
limits and the potentiality of the image. In this case the title alludes to a
double meaning: a mare, referring to being by the sea and taking in the
attraction inspired by the unfathomable, and amare, or ‘to love’, the word in harmony with the image, and linking the sentiment with the element.The
sea, as extraordinary and infinite as love.

Design in the lines

The natural elements that I show are fast-changing scripts, opportunities to discover traces and signs in the landscape that are offered to our interpretation. Graphical elements appear, etchings made by nature and perpetually subject to the alterations and uncertain conditions of vision. Through the metamorphoses of the natural we can perceive the vital energy which animates the universe,the accidental disorder or the creative force of the extraordinary and sublime. Both free us from having to describe the obviousness of reality, and they deliver us to the wonder of vision.