Max Cavallari Solo Exhibition: Seagull
CURATED BY SILVIA VANNACCI
2019/09/20 – 2019/10/20
MAO SPACE, SHANGHAI
In a world of visual hypertrophy, full of phone-size screen swiped images, where easy-to-produce pictures are taken with a consumeristic approach, the series of photographs presented by Max Cavallari represents a countertrend to today’s social-media-saturated landscape. The “Seagull” project, started during the Italian photographer’s residency at Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai earlier this year, features glimpses from a wandering process aimed at understanding today’s China.
While choosing to discover his surroundings through the lenses of a Seagull 4A, a Shanghainese twin lens reflex from the 1960s, the artist temporarily detaches himself from the fast aesthetic-oriented shooting trend, adopting a slow, discrete and tentative one instead. The camera, an instrument from yesteryears that requires time, slowness and focus, dictates the rules in the discovery process and draws the photographer back to pre digital mindset and out from today’s hectic pace.
Cavallari and his camera are like travel companions, both lost for different spatiotemporal reasons in an unfamiliar world which urges the artist to tell a story about it. The camera which is lost in time, becomes for the artist, whom is lost in space, the perfect medium in a process of discovery. A process that is still unaccomplished, characterized by a tactful, curious and respectful intention of understanding and documenting the surroundings.
Curated by Silvia Vannacci, “Seagull” is presented by Mao Space and produced by Contemporary Matters with the special support of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai 2019 and the Italian Culture Institute in Shanghai.
