Polaroid blooming
Year: 2019 – 2020
Device: CAMERA-LESS PHOTOGRAPHY WITH THE USE OF EXPIRED POLAROID FILM
Concept and photography: Gaia Adducchio
Curated by: Beatrice Luzi, art historian and art curator
The project is composed by more than 50 photos. Each image is the result of a scanned, digitally post-produced Polaroid frame and is printed just as one single, non-reproducible piece.
You can purchase my work also on:
https://www.artspace.com/artist/gaia-adducchio
https://www.widewalls.ch/artists/gaia-adducchio/artworks
“Motionless, stare into space, I was sinking in regions I thought were unreachable…”
Stanisław Lem – Solaris – 1961
The project “Polaroid blooming”, comprehending a body of work of more than 50 images, is born from the necessity to abandon oneself to less codified expressive channels, during the quest for additional creative freedom.
By adopting typical techniques of abstract painting to instant photography (specifically a re-elaboration of grattage skills by scrapping emulsion on Polaroid support) and by working with analog and digital means, I intended to realize images that allow, both during the creative process and the act of fruition, to let oneself go to unconscious and potentially liberating automatisms.
From the beginning, from the first application of the emulsion on the surface, until the final details of digital postproduction, references given by the interaction between texture, color and form are shaped in my mind.
Immersive texture, forms and colors which are synonymous of dynamism and at the same time of contemplation and abandonment of senses, in the hope that who is looking at the works can lose him- or herself not in mine, but in his/her unconscious, emotional and cultural references.
Gaia Adducchio
Polaroid Blooming is the outcome of a rough passage of liberation from the tested treatment of photosensitive matter and the representation of the cognizable. With this work Gaia Adducchio, known for the accuracy and intensity of her black and white analog photography, oversteps the notorious categories of “mediums” and undertakes an unconventional technical/generative process, which passes from the physical intervention on raw substance trough a meticulous digital production until reaching a new, transfigured, tangible consistency. It’s neither photography nor digital painting: Polaroid Blooming is the result of tactile manipulation and exposure of photographic self-developing emulsion (the one patented by Polaroid Corporation), which, after being digitally transformed into a formal “naked” mold, gets to know a new life of light and color through the algorithms of informatic elaboration. It’s here that unconscious projections and unexpected correspondences, in which the gaze swings eagerly from general to particular, do emerge free from any constraint, overlaping between abstraction and pareidolia. Once fine-tuned in every single piece, this chromatic carpet of tiny pixels takes back physical substance in a renovated dimensional scale through an accurate printing process on paper applied to metallic support.
What is, therefore, Polaroid Blooming? It’s an aesthetic happening, which culminates into visionary scenarios of high-level enjoinment, where analog and digital live one into the other without prevarication, in a series of compositions of exuberant imaginative power.
Consequently if, as written by Paul Éluard, “there’s no model for those who are looking for what has never been seen”, then Polaroid Blooming is an authentic claim of aesthetic freedom.
Beatrice Luzi
Festival & Exhibitions
December 2023/November 2024 – it’s shown at Betsy Hotel and Betsy Art Basel Exhibits for the curatorship of Lesley Goldwasser in collaboration with Artiste Culture by Sunaina Misra
https://www.thebetsyhotel.com/
March 2023 – it’s exhibiting at Étienne De Causans Gallery in Paris for the collective exhibition “Digital is my Art” curated by Isabelle Schmitt
http://isphoto.fr
October/November 2022 – a new edition of the solo exhibition “Polaroid Blooming” curated by Beatrice Luzi, is shown at FdF AquAstyle in Rome, organizers Edmund Kurenia and Francesco De Fabiis, curated by Beatrice Luzi
October 2022 – is part of Salon d’Automne in Paris, France
https://www.salon-automne.com/en/home/
September 2022 – is part of the contemporary art collective “When in Rome” curated by Rodshir Dailë for Dailë Galerie at the Rome Soho House
https://www.sohohouse.com/it/
February 2022 – solo exhibition “Polaroid Blooming” curated by the art historian Beatrice Luzi at Art G.A.P. Gallery, Rome, Italy
http://www.artgap.it/
February 2022 – is shown at the Grand Palais in Paris during the Salon Comparaisons exhibition
https://comparaisons.org/
October 2021 – is part of Salon d’Automne in Paris, France
https://www.salon-automne.com/en/home/
January/April 2021 – it’s one of the 4 authors being part of the virtual collective “New Surrealism” at Dailë Galerie, curated by Adila Ben and Rodshir Dailë
https://www.dailegalerie.com/
December 2020 – it gains a Merit Award during the “Painting & Photography” art exhibition at the Art Room Gallery, a contemporary online art gallery based in Berlin
https://www.artroomgalleryonline.com/
October 2020 – it’s one of the 4 authors being part of the virtual exhibition “restART” organized by Kaos 48 in Naples, curated by Fabrizio Scomparin, Stefano Nasti and Paola Cimmino
https://www.kaos48.com/
October 2020 – is part of the virtual edition of Salon d’Automne in Paris, France, which has physically been cancelled due to Covid 19 restrictions.
https://www.salon-automne.com/en/home/
May 2019 – international debut at the Prague Photo 2019, Czech Republic
https://www.praguefoto.cz/
