BRUNELLA LONGO

The gallery Pièce Unique Variations, shows at 26, rue Mazarine, a solo exhibition of Brunella Longo, young Italian artist she has been following for several years in all different directions of her artistic practice, presenting about thirty black and white portraits from the book “Brunella Longo – Centouno Ritratti” with an introduction by Bruno Corà, that represents the right conclusion of a project whereby the artist immortalizes 101 personalities of the art world she transforms, through a clever diversion, in objects of vision, in veritable art works.

Since Nadar, photography has developed, not without difficulties, an autonomous artistic language. The Brunella Longo’s choice to embrace a field historically “favourite” of painting like the portrait, reveals, once again, the identity and the enormous potential of the photographic medium, disengaging it, definitively, from the documentary instrumental role in which it has been, relegated for a long time.

In this case, the camera is interposed between the artist and her subject like a sort of mirror that reflects not the appearance, but the essence herself.

Brunella Longo waits until the moment “her prey” bends down her defences to open a chink in her armour and captive, in the black box, what she has got of more intimate : her soul…

Photography has a very precise definition linked to time : it “fixes” an instant of the present that falls, immediately after, in the past but, in Brunella Longo’s works present and past loses every importance. The characters that the artist portraitures appear in another dimension : disengaged of the time going by, they become eternal.

The contexts, the places where the Longo’s subjects are located, undergo the same lot : they lose all real connotation to mute in a sort of “mental landscape” projection, of psyche of those characters.

We are tented to say, with Bruno Corà, that “to catch the essence of a person with a photography is a real miracle” but Brunella Longo seems to win this ambitious challenge.

Opening party Saturday 24 January with a presentation of the book “Brunella Longo – Centouno Ritratti” published by Edizioni Gli Ori – Prato, in presence of Mr. Bruno Corà and the artist.