X: Pleasant Dementia

Gianfranco Pezzot is an Italian conceptual photographer who is interested in how various forces, such as history, economics and instinct, affect the ways we construct and make use of our environment. His abstract work is an attempt at inventing new, contemporary photographic languages. He lives and works in Italy.

Education

Pezzot graduated from the Drama Academy of Venice, Italy.

Technique

In an effort to push the boundary of photography as an artistic medium, Pezzot has adopted an aesthetic strategy akin to assemblage, bringing various, possibly unrelated visual elements together in the construction of a new image.

His abstract series Dichotomy of a Human Brain is emblematic of this approach. It was created by combining fragments of photographs of flowers, beach landscapes and crumpled sheets of paper then using that assemblage as a ground for additional artistic interventions, such as drawn lines and scribbled text. The various images and mediums combine to create a complex, layered image, presented in its final form as a digital C-print.

Inspiration

Pezzot is inspired by the way the brain constructs narratives from different images. When those images are altered, restructured, or combined with other images, the narrative becomes more less straightforward, and more interesting to try to interpret. He is also influenced by the changing role of photography as a contemporary artistic medium. He wonders about the value of shooting direct, unambiguous pictures compared to the value of approaching photography from a more open, investigative, experimental, and multi-disciplined perspective.

Artist statement

About his series Dichotomy of a Human Brain, Pezzot says:

“[It] is about the eternal struggle between anthropological instincts and the deceit of language, seen through all the ages of a human life...the details and symbols have a remarkable narrative significance and contribute to the semantics of an image. This body of work is a composite made up of bits of hundred different pictures...It brings in the forefront of contemporary photography without boundaries or constraints.”

Collections

His photographs are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Photographic Art in Kiyosato, Japan.

Exhibitions

Works by Pezzot have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including at the International Photography Festival in Lille, France, and the International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Florence, Italy.