Paolo Gioli : On The Edge Of (New) Media

16 Sep-4 Dec 2016

Overview

Over the course of his four-decade career, Paolo Gioli has produced work that constantly pushes the limits of a given medium, be it photography, film, drawing or painting. This exhibition focuses on a particular moment in the 1970s when Gioli was experimenting intensely with film and photography alongside his painting practice. In 1967 he spent a year in New York where he came across the experimental films of American New Cinema, including the work of Stan Brackage and Jonas Mekas. This was a turning point in Gioli's career as he discovered the possibilities offered by film, and indeed photosensitive materials in general, both to produce and to analyse images. He saw that film could be processed in an artisanal manner, which was in many ways similar to the solitary work of the painter in his studio, and he went on to spend many hours in the darkroom developing a range of new processes.