“Transgeneration”: Christian Fuchs & Francesca Belgiojoso
14 November 2015-7 January 2016
“Transgeneration” examines the transcendental power of the imagemaker to channel the past and inform the present through the performance-based photography of Peruvian artist Christian Fuchs and the vintage collages of Italian artist Francesca Belgiojoso.
“Collage can be a metaphor for dreams as the process is the same: we take from reality the pieces that we want and recombine them in stories with a new, personal meaning,” said Francesca Belgiojoso. Belgiojoso collects antique photographs of forgotten people and intertwines them with fragments of pictures taken from contemporary magazines. For her, the original context of the images is itinerant: she severs the faces and bodies of her subjects from the past and creates a new identity for them in the present. Her background as a psychotherapist emerges in her artistic practice. Through her collages, she retrieves the memories of society, connecting the archetypes of ancient figures with our contemporary mind.
Christian Fuchs’ “Transgeneration” is a series of photographs in which Fuchs becomes different men and women of his family. He said, “I recreate a moment lived by an ancestor using my body as a vehicle; in order to accomplish this, I use costumes and characterization, I let my hair or beard grow, I shave; I perform all the necessary acts in order to appear as close as possible to the character I am going to play.”
According to new research, traumatic experiences in our lives and in those of our ancestors leave molecular scars on our genes: our experiences, as well as those of our forebears, are never gone, even if they have been forgotten. Perhaps that “something” is not only the product of our ancestors’ experiences, but of our society’s as a whole. Transgeneration, or across generation, our story unfolds.
(text adapted from the gallery’s press materials)
INFORMATION
The Harts Gallery
20 Bank Street
New Milford, Connecticut 06776 USA
(917) 913-4641
Hours:
Thursday-Saturday, Noon-8PM
Sunday, Noon-3PM
or by appointment
Image:
I’m aware that you are cheating
by Francesca Belgiojoso
20″x20″
paper collage with vintage illustrations
2015