Massimiliano Camellini
"AL DI LÀ DELL'ACQUA"

Exhibition: 25 January – 23 February, 2020
Opening: Friday, 24 January, 6 p.m.

The title of the project derives from the phrase "Lòt Bò Dlo", a Kreyòl expression of the Haitian inhabitants, which stands for promise (of a better future) and peril (of Black Atlantic Ocean), hope and despair, seeking different answers on the other side of the water.

This is the starting point of the project of Massimiliano Camellini, a four-year period spent in the exploration of cargo vessels of different nationalities; he started also from the literary inspiration of the novel "Novecento" by Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. The novel tells the story of a sailor who decides that a life entirely spent on board, although far from the earth and from its "guarantees", will be the best choice, always and forever ....

He boards ships that will be at sea for months, he gets into work areas, he looks for the captain’s headquarter, he observes the rest rooms, the places of leisure, the private cabins. He excludes the inhabitants from the photographs, we find them out instead through objects, in little totems or amulets which are used to create a connection with dry land. The oxymoron lies in the existence of daily normality made up of small rituals which is in a state of continuous movement.

Massimiliano photographs "islands" which enclose internal rules as though they were city-states awaiting new geographies. The exterior, when visible, is backlit, almost separated by a veil, distant, perhaps threatening. It can be seen through a window, a porthole, but the horizon seems hazy. The story begins inside the ship, where exchanges between individuals are translated into the accumulation of sensitive objects, rooms where a smartphone left on a window sill describes the distance between people who are far from each other, so an inevitably difficult relationship. The journey is left out, a presence-absence, something existing, but which must not be spoken about. Because what matters is what happens and what could happen inside the house: the rooms, one after another, describe a division of roles, of tasks assigned, an inevitable hierarchy which needs a structure, even architectural.

A daily but peaceful routine is shown more evident by the emptiness, by those elements capable of reconstructing an idea of living space, a domestic stability sought and obtained.

(from the text "Photography of an Oxymoron" by ANDREA TINTERRI, project Curator)

Massimiliano Camellini was born in Venice (Italy) in 1964.

The project AL DI LÀ DELL'ACQUA was published 2017 by Greta's Books (Milan, Italy) and the book includes contributions by Andrea Tinterri, art writer & curator, Donatello Bellomo, Italian writer and author of the novel "The cargo man", and Fabio Dei, anthropologist, under the patronage of Regione Liguria, Municipality of Genova, Genova Chamber of Commerce, Italian Chapter of Royal Photographic Society, Laboratory of Naval and Maritime History of Genova University, and in cooperation with Mu.MA – Sea and Migrations Museum (Genova, Italy), Association of Sea and Navigation Museums, and "Doc SAI" – Genova Photographic Archive.

During his artistic career Camellini worked with important artists, writers and photography curators including, among others, Charles-Henri Favrod, Jean Arrouye, Enrica Viganò, Georges Vercheval, Donatello Bellomo, Jonny Costantino, Lòrànd Hegyi, Manuela De Leonardis, Victor Kiernan, Andrea Tinterri. He exposed at Museum Historii Fotografii w Krakowie (Poland), Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi (Belgium), Mandeep, photography and beyond, Rome (Italy), MAMAC Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Liege (Belgium), Fotonoviembre 2007, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, MIA (Milan Image Art Fair) 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016, Museum of Photography, Seoul (Korea), Museé d'Art Moderne et Contemporain Saint Etienne (France), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (Italy). His images are collected in several permanent collections of museums of contemporary art and photography worldwide, among them: Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, USA), Collezione Maramotti (Reggio Emilia, Italy), Museo della Storia della Fotografia Fratelli Alinari (Florence, Italy), Galerie Municipale du Chateau d’Eau, Toulouse (France), Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Musée de Strasbourg (France), Museum of Photography, Seoul (Korea).

Main works and respective publications are Oltre le gabbie (2001), I Volanti (2004), Duel (2006), New Arenas (2009), Laboratory Obsession, from science to dream (2010), 6 p.m., working time is over (2012), Al di là dell'acqua (2016).

Reviews on his projects were published by photography and contemporary art magazines such as Variatio, Silvershotz, View on Photography, Il Fotografo, Monovisions, Contemporary Journal of Royal Photographic Society. He is a contributor of the cinema magazine "Rifrazioni, dal cinema all'oltre" (Boulogne, Italy).

More information: massimilianocamellini.org