VENDITORE DI CAPPELLI

Venditore di cappelli, Genova, late June 2015 [Olympus Pen E-P1]

DALÌ’S CORNER

Dalì’s Corner, Genova, late June 2015 [Olympus Pen E-P1]

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE, ONE NIGHT EXHIBITION, SEPTEMBER 13

This one night show will inaugurate EXPOinbArca, a series of theatre performances in the EXPOinCITTÀ cultural events circuit. Matteo Ceschi’s nine shots, taken in Italy, London and Paris, are linked to Anna Bonel’s shows, which will star theatre celebrities like Enrico Bonavera, by the Shakespearian title of the exhibition, All the World’s a Stage. Loretta Valtz Mannucci, professor of English Literature and United States History and long time collaborator of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, chose for each of Ceschi’s shot a verse from famous Shakespeare plays. Federico Ramponi, creative designer, shares the mounting work with her. Eliconturbo Folk Ensemble, a young Milanese folk-jazz-roots group, will play the perfect soundtrack for the night.

All the world’s a stage/And all men and women merely players;/They have their exits and their entrances,/And one man in his time plays many parts (William Shakespeare, As You Like It: Act 2, Scene 7)

Matteo Ceschi’s brief show proposes a theater in the mind of each and every, all, who view it. It proposes stories in the fleeting moment. Anchored, yet free. Evanescent. Open to Reason, to intuition in play with rationality. Its antecedents are many, from ‘high’ culture and ‘low’. At its back are long centuries of Tableaux vivants, of 13th century peasant huts and 18th century dining rooms replete with damask tablecloths, crystal, porcelain and silver, laid out to the life in museums, on stages, in 1930s film and Downtown Abbey TV; or M.me Tussaud’s waxworks scenes; to the painstaking ‘rooms in a box’ children once labored over in school. Theater in the mind. And the great, centuries long, play of the Tarot cards: dealt, perused, interpreted, reshuffled, by Prime Minister, tycoon and worker. Each figure a world of individual stories. Evanescent. Real. And unreal. Life. (Loretta Valtz Mannucci)

The mise en scène of Matteo Ceschi’s nine “stories without (an) end” is as volatile, transparent and fragile as his approach to photography. A fluid and intimate space gives each image the time to spark the visitor’s fantasy and take him/her to one of the possible cores and endings of the story it tells. Yesterday was the time it was shot. Today, tomorrow and the day after will be the time of the infinite personal narratives of the observers. In the interval, there is the passage from the physical scene/photo to the immaterial yet lasting dimension of imagination. (Federico Ramponi)

KILLER INSTINCT

Killer Instinct, Milano, early July 2015/Future Past [Olympus Pen E-P1]

RICHARD AND THE SAD LION

Richard and The Sad Lion, Genova, late June 2015 [Olympus Pen E-P1]

SISTERS

Sisters, Milano, late June 2015 [Olympus Pen E-P1]