FORTE MARGHERA
September 22, 2006 – October 22, 2006
Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to announce Forte Marghera, an exhibition by Primož Bizjak. Forte Marghera presents a major series of photographs by Primož Bizjak, a Madrid-based artist born in 1976.
This most recent series focuses on Forte Marghera, a Napoleonic fortification located between Venice and its inland part, the city of Mestre, which was used for military purposes until the mid 90s. The entire series was first shown in Centro Culturale Candiani in Mestre, in an exhibition curated by Riccardo Caldura. The current exhibition presents a selection of the works of the Forte Marghera series.
Riccardo Caldura writes in the exhibition catalogue: “Forte Marghera is a wide ex-military area on the lagoon border dating back to the Napoleonic age, then serving to the Habsburgs and finally, until a few years ago, as an Italian army supply structure, now completely disused and under functional redefinition for society’s uses. It is an enchanting place because of its functionally suspended condition, features of monumentality and anonymity that mark out various typologies of the existing buildings, and omnipresent and luxuriant nature. Bizjak is a photographer who has long been focusing on photographing places, primarily former military structures, which have lost their primary function over years and today bear witness to deep political and geographical changes in Europe.
Bizjak developed one of his most interesting sets of works by photographing the ex-military buildings (karavle) that still stud the Italian-Slovenian border. In congruence with his last series of photographs on Forte Marghera, he puts into his repertory the buildings’ typology, with a very precise line of composition, certainly in relation to the great, analytical, and minimalist school of Bernd and Hilla Becher. But at the same time what reports the actuality of his photography is his careful approach to those neo-Romantic aspects, as landscape with ruins, standing out among the state of buildings. Neo-Romantic aspects which aren’t unrelated to the great lesson of masters of American photography, such as Robert Adams, or which stand out among the extraordinary landscape images by one of the last Bechers’ followers, Elger Esser.”
Supported by: MOL – Cultural Department of the City of Ljubljana.
Special thanks: Centro Culturale Candían, Mestre-Venezia & Galleria Cintemporaneo, Mestre-Venezia.