Lucchini - Gastel, MyOwnGallery, via Tortona 27 Milan. October- November 2006.
Flavio Lucchini and Giovanni Gastel cooperation and friendship date back many years. When in publishing, Lucchini’s influence on Gastel was that of a “master”, as he taught him how to decipher and articulate the meaning of femininity in photographs filled with magic and mistery. Lives led as on parallel tracks, brought together by an artistic essence, which is to be found among everyday life’s turns. A new meeting has livened up old ties and committed the two artists, the sculptor and the photographer, to prove themselves on the same theme: the non-existent portrait, the loss of innocence, the image of modern-day women.
Contibuting an equal number of art works, of the same size, but with different long-lasting stands, Lucchini proposes portraits which are naive, merely hinted and imprecise, as if drawn by the child he used to be. Lucchini chooses to work with “buz”, a hardening material which is smeared on a polyester scale model. Gastel reads life as it flows, from birth to death, on the same “stateless” face, which undergo a deep transformation, from innocence to decomposition. Gastel tranfers the photographic image onto a clothed and enamelled support which, eventually, gives rise to an ambiguity between painting and photography. This cooperation and dialogue between Lucchini and Gastel is a special event, expressly conceived and realized for “La Giornata del Contemporaneo” (Contemporary Art Day), 14th October 2006. The event is sponsored by AMACI (Associazione dei Musei d’Arte Contemporanea Italiani) and supported by DARC (Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali).