Sixteen photographic artworks, the Posizioni Pirata installation and four multi-sized light-box compose Roccaforte, the second Neapolitan solo show of the Sicilian, Siracusa city borned, artist Davide Bramante. Roccaforte is curated by Raffaella Morra and Loredana Troise, organised by the non profit company E-M ARTS, hosted in the beautiful XVII Century rooms of Palazzo Ruffo di Bagnara, home to Fondazione Morra.
After My own Rave (1999), installed in the previous space of Fondazione Morra located in Via Calabritto, Davide Bramante is back in town, Naples, to exhibit: his photos catch the main world towns, from Naples to Turin to Cairo, to Madrid, New York, Beijing, Paris and London.
Davide Bramante: “Just one photo of mine is enough to render back the body of an entire city (…) Many times I told and wrote that my way to portray is the same to my way of thinking, living, dreaming, hoping: all is juxtaposed as an unicum…As artist, I prefer the medium of photography because - due to major force-cause - it is the only one with which I am able to quickly express my ideas (1/250, 1/500 of a second)”. Each image on show is obtained with an analogical process and juxtaposes more sights of a city, it is a meaningful and powerful sum the artist Bramante designs first mentally, then by shooting more than one fraction of vision of a city on the same film.
A square, a monument, a basaltic weft, the sky and the night, fractals of genius loci, self referenced stories, colours and smells, ethnography: each city, Bramante notes, “ is the place of our vision, such as nature and its cosmos were in the past, cities now are the real imagery of present times because they are made with my images”.
Artworks, realized with the technique of multiple exposition on shooting, are mounted under plexiglass: each one unveils all the meticulous details composing the vision of the artist.
The multi-focal addition of details and places, framed in an ascending climax, makes the exhibition seducing: its reading is a discover following an exegesis and emotional decrypting whose results are unexpected.
With Roccaforte, audience sinks in something seeming natural but is out of the ordinary, as in a complex net to be perceived in its struggling time ambiguity: “…Sometimes I mix these things and do not understand if I am going back or forward the time and the space”, the artist ends.
The show entitles Roccaforte because Bramante likes to accentuate the relation with Naples, a city that always represented a reference and the main creative source in his practice during the years since his first solo show on 1999.
“You cannot think to Davide Bramante’s practice - the curators Raffaella Morra and Loredana Troise add - as a description of nude life. You have to bear it as a representative code, reducing syntax to a series of logic data fully enriched by connotative meanings”.
Davide Bramante (1970) is born in Siracusa, Sicily, where he recently came back to be settled after 13 years spent among Turin, Rome, Bologna, Milan and New York. Since 1991 he works with video, installations and photography. Graduated in Fine Arts at Accademia Albertina (Turin) and at Accademia Fidia (Cosenza), Bramante has been visiting artist at Franklin Furnace Foundation (New York) and exhibited with solo show in Naples, Rome, Pescara, Modica, Florence, Isernia, Milan, Catania, Palermo, Bologna, Cairo, Lisbon, Amsterdam. Among International Fairs, he also exhibited at various editions of Art Basel, Art Cologne, Artissima Turin, MiArt Milan, Artefiera Bologna, Art Verona, ARCO, FIAC, Palm Beach 3, Paris Photo, Scope.
Davide Bramante is represented in Italy by E-M ARTS / Fondazione Morra (Naples), Studio la Città (Verona), Poggiali&Forcolini (Florence), for special project by Laveronica (Modica). Abroad he is represented by Gaia Gallery (Geneve), Art Lounge (Lisbon), RVS fine arts (Southampton NY), Fu Xin (Shangai).
EURO-MEDITERRANEAN ARTS is a no profit cultural association managed by Raffaella Morra since 2000; it acts within the Culture, basic instrument to resolve strategically the differences and to comprehend the changes of the observers’ experiences and contexts, through an open process of collective communication.
E-M ARTS prefers a direct interaction with the public in order to stimulate an authentic dialogue and to avoid the ‘museum-container’ logic. The purpose is to involve the EU Countries and those of the Mediterranean Sea (MENASA), thus Naples, all along place of great creativity, undertakes the role of Culture city, crossroads and ideal connection between Western Europe and North-Africa, in reference of the most modern needs for economic, social and cultural integration. Together with the Fondazione Morra - Istituto di Scienze delle Comunicazioni Visive, E-M Arts promotes and organizes the research, the production and the spread of the 20th and 21st Century’s culture.
