From November 23, 2023 to June 2, 2024, the rooms of Palazzo del Duca will host the retrospective exhibition "Sandy Skoglund: The Imaginary Worlds of Photography, 1974-2023," organized by the Municipality of Senigallia with the support of the Marche Region, in collaboration with Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio and Galleria Paci Contemporary.
The exhibition retraces the career of an artist who has chosen photography as her preferred expressive medium to capture the rich environmental installations she creates. These installations are composed of everyday objects, materials designed and manufactured by Skoglund herself, as well as small and medium-sized sculptures specifically created for her imaginative landscapes. All of her works have a rather long gestation period, as Skoglund spends months, sometimes years, studying and recreating every minute detail of the installation that will be later photographed. She employs strong chromatic contrasts that make the scenes even more fantastical and surreal.
As the artist herself stated, "Without photography, conceptual art would be erased from the memory of mankind. In this form, my art can be perceived as a painting, as an open window to another world. This, on the other hand, is the reason why I work with a camera. The large format fits well with the burlesque aspect of my work."
Finally, "Winter", the artist's latest work, a project that she started in 2008 and completed in 2018, which required years of experimentation and attempts and where she experimented new techniques and digital processes focused on the image of a snowflake considered "a hybrid of techniques and concepts immortalized together by the camera on December 22, 2018. In contrast to the quick snapshot, Winter is a study of perseverance and persistence, an artificial landscape that celebrates the beautiful and frightening qualities of the coldest season," Skoglund explains.
"Winter" is the central focus of the exhibition in Senigallia: in addition to the photograph itself, the exhibition will recreate the setting of its creation, with the backgrounds and some of the original sculptures used by Skoglund, allowing visitors to literally step into the artwork and discover up closely the meticulous details and the incredible work that lies what may seem to be an instantaneous shot.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Danilo Montanari Editore
