PHOTO:Francesco Jodice-Panorama

Francesco Jodice graduated as an architect and began his artistic activity in 1995. From his very first works, undertaken in a specifically urban area, he has concentrated on an analysis of the new relationships between social behaviour and the urban landscape in various geographical areas. For his works he makes use of different media and combines photography and video with writing and the creation of maps.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Fotomuseum Winterthur Archive

“Panorama” is the first international retrospective dedicated to Francesco Jodice, spanning 20 years of his work. In the exhibition places, times and stories collide, addressing sociological questions about our urban world. By presenting a wide range of documents like maps, books, newspaper clippings and interviews, the exhibition also gives a behind-the-scenes look at Jodice’s artistic process that strikes a fine balance between theory and practice. Panorama presents a contemporary geopolitical scenario and an eclectic mosaic of a world in flux. From the vast production of Francesco Jodice were selected six paradigmatic projects crossing his career from the beginnings to its most recent works. “What We Want” (1995- ), is a photography and texts Atlas about new and old landscapes watched as the projection of people’s desires. The archive of the project collects works realized in 150 cities around the world since 1995. The two books already published and the exhibitions suggest a relation between contemporary photography and geopolitical issues, investigating the modified relation in between art and society. In “The Secret Traces” (1997-2007), anonymous people in different cities become the object of a visual obsession, almost entomological, trying to identify the nature of a precise relationship between people and the city. The project investigates the identity of citizenship, the sense of belonging to a defined urban community. The series of films “Citytellers” (2006-10), presents a preview of a future that is closer than we think. For example in “Sao Paulo_Citytellers” (2006), Jodice explores the various aspects Sao Paulo: a new economy, alternative jobs, a new way of life, stories on the fear of abduction, aggression, and violence, which prompted the richer classes to use helicopter as taxis. The many stories, while surreal the spectator, are mere fragments of everyday life in a Sao Paulo, thus demonstrating the evolution of living in the 21st century. The scenary is real, but the experience is of tomorrow. “Ritratti di classe” (2005-09) constitutes a kind of core drilling on the state of Italian culture and society today, resolved through the standard canon of the school photography year-end. “The Room” (2009-2016), is a snapshot of today’s complex, a kaleidoscope of news seemingly unsystematic, a mosaic of “knowledge that emerge from the darkness” that surrounds us completely, and that tells us the mood of the country in one of his most blacks. “Solid Sea” (2002), is a project developed in collaboration with Multiplicity collective and originally presented at Documenta 11, the project is repeated in a setting created specifically for the exhibition and transforms the Mediterranean Sea in a solid and compact space, unique stable borders in an era marked by conflicts and constant revisions of national identity.

Info: Curator: Francesco Zanot, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45, Winterthur, Zurich, Duration: 11/2-7/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Sun 11:00-18:00, Wed 11:00-20:00, www.fotomuseum.ch