JEFF BARK – PARADISE GARAGE
dates 07.06.2019 – 28.07.2019
Zuecca Projects is very proud to support and collaborate in the production of “Jeff Bark – Paradise Garage“, the first solo show in Italy of the American photographer Jeff Bark, hosted at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.
This collaboration is part of Zuecca Projects’ mission to expand its operational boundaries from the Venetian territory, through partnerships with cultural private realities and institutional spaces, for the realization of unique and original projects, characterized by a cross-sectional approach to languages of contemporaneity.
From the 7th of June to the 28th of July, Palazzo delle Esposizioni will host American photographer Jeff Bark’s “Paradise Garage”. The body of work found in this opening exhibition is comprised of over fifty never before seen pieces dedicated to the Eternal City. Curated by Alessio de’Navasques, the exhibition has been envisioned and structured in a way that purposely allows no room for boundaries between art and viewer. It is a path to be walked together, one that leads into a vision free from reality’s constraints, into a world that was born and lives solely within the artist’s eyes. Each image is but a fraction of a moment the photographer has suspended in his memory, a material manifestation of his private narrative.
His garage in Upstate New York, a once plain, blank-walled space, has been transformed into the unlikely home of enigmatic scenes created through the merging of exquisite details and iconographic references to the art of the past. Displayed at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the photographs of Bark’s garage sets become surreal landscapes, inhabited at times by nostalgic vignettes, and at others by imposing and monumental portraits, reminiscent of the allure and scale of the large painting collections found in Roman palazzi.
Jeff Bark’s project originated two years ago: a brief visit to the Italian capital inspired him to recreate, in a space found somewhere within the abstract realm and that of reality, a Grand Tour in the Bel Paese. His vision grants seemingly insignificant objects a sense of poetry and meaning; souvenirs found in American flea markets become the catalyst for grandiose compositions and solemn portraits, images that end up representing – symbolically and allegorically – the nuances of human nature. The careful use of lighting, along with the richness, the ambiguity with which every detail is nurtured, render it all unexpected and uncertain: it is a still stolen from a reel we shall never see, from which we do not know a beginning, and will never know an end.
JEFF BARK – PARADISE GARAGE
Curated by Alessio de’Navasques
Promoted by Roma Capitale – Assessorato alla Crescita culturale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
Location: Palazzo delle Esposizioni, via Nazionale 194 – 00184 Rome
Dates: June 07 – July 28, 2019
Info tickets/hours: www.palazzoesposizioni.it
Media partner: Dimensione Suono Soft
Supporters: Pastilles Anberries; Krumiri Rossi; Moovenda, Zuecca Projects, Rémi Barbier
Technical sponsors: Trenitalia; Coopculture
Partner: Alitalia
Press kit: drive.google.com