Pictures are from Vincent Castella which he created between 2020 and 2021 and collected in the book of Padua, a volume published by Silvana Editoriale on commission from Hermes Italy.
The exhibition at the Botanical Garden offers a selection of forty images
In the volume Padova is shown through four themes: the «Botanical Garden» and the vegetable world; the «painting», frescoes, preserved in churches, chapels, oratories, baptisteries, palaces, but also choirs, altars, friezes, «architecture», as internal space; L'"University», with its history being a crucial node of European culture.
Le images they are presented in only two formats: a panoramic one (aspect ratio 3:1), narrow and long, used horizontally and vertically, with close-up and juxtaposed shots; one almost square (aspect ratio 4:3).
explains Castella: "I adjust the center and the vertical for a sufficient portion and then I extend it, to see the presence of the extension, to see if anything happens, to include new meanings».
A Quadriptych of the Martyrdom and Transportation of Saint Christopher of Mantegna and a triptych of the frescoes in the Baptistery of Menabuoi, are printed on large-sized light paper, freely hung on the walls like banners. Also, videos like movements within images.
«And of course, observing a city through these themes – says the curator – forces us to think of art as a historical document. As Gianni Rodari wrote, “A stone thrown into a pond arouses concentric waves that spread across its surface… Other invisible movements propagate in depth… Countless events, or micro-events, follow one another in a very short time. Perhaps not even if you had the time and desire, you could all register, without omissions”. The Castella pictures therefore they produce a proliferation of stories, only some of which are told in this one book and in this show »
Each visitor can reconstruct his following the stone thrown into the pond in the Book of Padua
Castella, that had started there his history as an artist precisely through a field survey of African American communities of the Mississippi and Tennessee, continues with his means and his methods his work on representation, on reality that becomes image. The act of representing almost always involves violence towards the represented subject. For many years he worked on theindustry contemporary city, on the landscape and the urban fabric, and has more recently focused on painting andItalian Renaissance architecture, to then devote himself to natural world portrayed in captivity botanists and greenhouses.
Cover image: Botanical garden. Cavity in the trunk of the eastern plane tree. Copyright Vincent Castella
