THE GAZE AND THE GUT*

An exhibition test of Lorenzo Serafino

Curated by Arianna Sollazzo

“The gaze and the gut - chapter one” is the first exhibition of a larger project consisting of a collection of images archived during seven years of intense research.

Initially conceived as a reflection on the perception of sexualized images and bodies, this first chapter has added a layer of considerations on the impossibility of shaping images by trying to deceive them.

Images are alive.

Images see with the eyes that see them. (José Saramago. Cecità. 1995)

Our gaze is educated by what we are used to looking at.

It is an archive of images, born of the desire to understand the practices of collecting and the satisfaction in doing so. It arises from the inner part of the artist, from the will to dismount it.

In particular, this chapter works as a case study on the external perception of images and focuses on the feedback and criticism of visitors. The gaze refers to the judgement/criticism, the gut to the visceral part, it is the inner vision of the artist and is intended to represent the reversal of the approach to images.

*Wilson, E. The brain in the gut in Psychomatic: Feminism and the neurological body. Duke University Press: 2004.)

IMAGES

Digital images selected from a collection of thousands.

Video.

Sound.

Installations.

BIO

Lorenzo Serafino 1994, raised in Casatenovo (Lombardy, Italy) is a photographer and video maker, currently based in Berlin.

His work is based on the interest in how the photographic image works - technically and theoretically - that arose during his MA in Brera Fine Arts Academy, where he met Arianna Sollazzo, with which founded the curatorial collective INVERTEBRE.

“The gaze and the gut” is his first solo exhibition.

Arianna Sollazzo is an independent curator and a researcher whose area of study and interest is focused on the analysis of the relationship between bodies/images analyzing them through contemporary curatorial and artistic practices referring to feminist new materialism and posthuman feminism. Her ongoing research is focused on what she called bodies of salty water - a term taken from Astrida Neimanis Bodies of Water (2017) - subjects belonging to the watery ecosystem and endowed with their own agency.

She is one of the founding members of the curatorial duo INVERTEBRE, of an office, a group of operators in the arts and culture field and of un trait d'union, a collective with multiple approaches to the audio/visual. She is a contributor for the Forme Uniche platform with the column ARTTA(N)K.