KENRO IZU. Requiem for Pompeii
FMAV MATA - Ex-Manifattura Tabacchi
via della Manifattura dei Tabacchi 83, Modena
Opening
Friday 6 December 2019, 6 pm
Dates
7 December 2019 – 13 April 2020
The exhibition presents 55 previously unseen photographs donated by the Japanese artist to the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, in a lyrical vision of what was left behind in Pompeii the day after the eruption in 79 AD.
Modena is continuing to forge a special relationship with photography. Now one of the top locations in Italy for this particular form of expression, it is capable of influencing the city’s whole cultural scene thanks to the contribution of institutions such as the Galleria Civica and Fondazione Fotografia Modena, which merged in 2017 to become Fondazione Modena Arti Visive.
From 6 December 2019 to 13 April 2020, Fondazione Modena Arti Visive is hosting a captivating exhibition dedicated to Pompeii, curated by Chiara Dall’Olio and Daniele De Luigi Proprio, at one of its two venues: FMAV MATA – Ex Manifattura Tabacchi. The exhibition is co-promoted by Pompeii Archaeological Park which is lending some reproductions of the famous plaster casts of the victims of the eruption for the occasion and will then host the exhibition on site in Pompeii.
Headlining the exhibition is Japanese photographer Kenro Izu (Osaka, 1949), whose lasting fascination with the remnants of ancient civilizations has led to the creation of a series of images captured at the most important and best-known archaeological sites in the world, from Egypt to Cambogia, Indonesia to India, Tibet to Syria.
In Modena, Kenro Izu will be presenting Requiem for Pompeii, a project he began in 2015, in collaboration with Fondazione Fotografia Modena, dedicated to the Campanian city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD and buried under ash and rock. The excavations did not only bring to light buildings, but also the exact forms of the bodies of the inhabitants at the moment of their deaths, captured by making casts of the gaps left by their frames under the hardened layer of detritus.
The exhibition proposes a selection of 55 previously unseen images which Kenro Izu has donated to Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena. In the photographs, in a poetic gesture of compassion, the artist has set out copies of the original casts of the bodies, white human shapes which stand out against the ruins of Pompeii.