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David LaChapelle for Giacomo Ceruti. Gated Community is a photographer’s tribute to the painter of the past | 1
David LaChapelle for Giacomo Ceruti. Gated Community is a photographer’s tribute to the painter of the past | 2
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David LaChapelle for Giacomo Ceruti. Gated Community is a photographer’s tribute to the painter of the past

Feb. 13, 2023

David LaChapelle in Brescia. A tribute by the American photographer to Giacomo Ceruti, an eighteenth-century painter of the latter, unveiled in preview at Vogue Italia

 

They called him Il Pittocchetto because he painted the poor, the outcasts, the vagabonds, the peasants. Giacomo Ceruti, who is much more than this, was one of the most important painters of the Italian eighteenth century. He portrayed his subjects with a documentary style, typical of reality painting of the time, but also with that spirit of human empathy that made him unique. On the occasion of Bergamo – Brescia 2023 Capital of Culture , it is the capital of Franciacorta – where he lived most of his time – to dedicate an exhaustive exhibition to him, Poverty and Nobility , in the Santa Giulia museum which goes beyond his best-known portraiture to also investigate the international scope of his career with his most beautiful paintings in which he painted the nobles of the time from all over Europe.

Gated Community, the site specific work of David LaChapelle

 

But it is his painting of reality that inspired the David La Chapelle project for Giacomo Ceruti. Nomad in a Beatiful Land,curated by Denis Curti, which opens on 14 February at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo (the exhibition then remains open until November). LaChapelle is a superstar of world photography and Giacomo Ceruti, an eighteenth-century painter too little known. Together they create a sort of short circuit because art, when it is, is always contemporary, extraordinary. The American photographer must have thought so too who took up the challenge of the Brescia Musei Foundation to produce a site-specific work precisely as a tribute to that Ceruti, finding his own inspiration in his paintings, his own closeness to the last, the fragile , humanity on the margins. Ceruti painted, with a new dignity compared to the times, the poor, beggars, washerwomen, street children; LaChapelle photographs prostitutes, marginalized, homeless, drug addicts and friends with AIDS. Is there a difference? Very little. There is empathy. Very much. So three centuries seem close and so we look at art, always with respect, always up close.

Thus was born Gated Community, a representation, according to the American photographer, of the contradictions of our society, of the ostentation of wealth that coexists alongside ever more widespread poverty. A reflection on the inequalities of our time, born from a meditation on Ceruti’s work which even broadens his message towards a global and disastrously current dimension.

In Gated Community , taken in Los Angeles in December 2022, a long tent city crowds the sidewalks of the city: patterns by the most famous international brands appear on the tops of the tents of the homeless , ideally evoking the fashion brand show on Rodeo Drive . The place is not accidental: it is the sidewalk in front of the Lacma, the prestigious contemporary art museum which has just completed a 750 million dollar fundraiser for its expansion. The contradictions between wealth and poverty are immediately apparent: the designer tents (which will then really be donated to the homeless) make us reflect on the dramatic economic situation which, especially after the pandemic, has seen inequalities increase ; particularly in California, which has the highest number of homeless people in the United States.

Build strong critical thought on the exaggerations of luxury

 

David LaChapelle’s ability to synthesize always surprises me. We had a lot of discussions about this project and David confessed some concern at the beginning . That of being up to the comparison with Giacomo Ceruti. Then the decision to take a side step. Comparisons can be devastating. Hence the idea of ​​”building” strong critical thinking. All aimed at the contemporary. On the exaggerations of luxury. On the differences of social classes. This is how Gated community was born, a powerful story. A cruel and sincere “staging”, capable of getting straight to everyone’s heart.

Denis Curti , curator of the exhibition

The Nomad in a Beautiful Land project as a whole sees LaChapelle’s series Jesus Is My Homeboy (2003) enter the halls of the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, in addition to the work Gated Community . Not only that: on the occasion of the exhibition, on 21 April at 9 pm the Nuovo Eden cinema will offer the screening of the film Rize – Get up and dance (USA 2005, 86′): the documentary directed by David LaChapelle, awarded at the Sundance Film Festival, filmed in the suburbs of Los Angeles, it illustrates the two dance subcultures of clowning and krumping, exploded in the black ghettos of the city, destroyed in the days of violent racial riots that arose after the verdict in the Rodney King case.

David LaChapelle in Brescia for Giacomo Ceruti. 
Nomad in a Beautiful Land
curated by Denis Curti
14 February – 10 November 2023
Brescia, Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo
piazza Moretto 4, Brescia

Source: VOGUE ITALIA

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