Marcello Grassi. Les Contes du Regard – Tales of the Eyes, the photography exhibition of the Italian artist Marcello Grassi presented by the Iaga Contemporary Art Gallery in Cluj-Napoca, is an itinerant project exhibited in Italy and other important cities in the world, dedicated to forty years of research of the artist, known internationally for investigating the past preserved in museums and archaeological sites in Europe, from Ravenna to Arles, from the Louvre to the Uffizi, and told through photographs of profound poetry.
After the success at the Fondazione l’Arsenale in Iseo, where it was exhibited in the fall of 2021, Grassi proposes an exhibition specially designed for the halls of the IAGA Contemporary Art Gallery, presenting for the first time photographs of new research. The show is accompanied by a catalog consisting of an anthology of photographs that capture over 40 years of artistic research. The more than one hundred photographs, taken over forty years of activity, depict the masterpieces and secrets kept in museums, told through Grassi’s lens and analyzed in the critical text written by Ilaria Bignotti and other contributions dedicated to the photographer by photography historians and conservators and museum.
The spaces of the IAGA Contemporary Art Gallery become a magical place animated by sculptural presences from the most prestigious international museums or from almost secret sites that the photographer found with long searches. Particularly important is the sequence of photographs dedicated to Antonio Canova, master of the great neoclassical sculpture, photographed in his temple, the Canova Museum in Possagno.
The more than 20 works rigorously selected depicting Antiquity masterpieces can be seen until October 14, 2023.
The exhibition can be visited for free from Tuesday to Saturday, from 14:00 to
18.00 or by appointment.
About the artist
Marcello Grassi was born in Reggio Emilia in 1960. Since he was a child, thanks to the help and passion of his father, Corrado, he became interested in photography.
Since 2019, the contemporary art gallery IAGA Contemporary Art in Cluj-Napoca has exclusively represented it.
In 2020, he was selected in the context of the national call “Expression of interest for the creation of photographic exhibitions that will take place in the exhibition spaces of the Romanian National Museum for the three years 2020/2022″ negli spazi espositivi del Museo Nazionale Romano per il triennio 2020/2022”).
He has exhibited in numerous personal and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. His photographs are in the collections of important museums and institutions. Charles-Henri Favrod, Michèle Moutashar, Massimo Mussini, Nadia Raimondi, Luciano Ligabue, Robert Pujade, Umberto Nobili, Jean Arrouye, Paolo Barbaro, Elio Grazioli and Walter Guadagnini, Ilaria Bignotti have written about his artistic research.
