MLZ Art Dep presents the photo exhibition “Camera-Eye, note from a distant New York” by Ugo Nespolo, running from March 16 to April 27, 2019

This solo show comprises fourteen black and white photographs taken in New York, where the versatile artist and filmmaker lived between the late Seventies and the Eighties. Armed with his small Leica, he walked around the city’s neighborhoods aiming at documenting its multiple facets, focusing on precise themes: flashes of daily life, streets, walls, shop windows, galleries.

The images, displayed here for the very first time, portray a number of places from the throbbing, dynamic life which had characterized the Big Apple at that time. The notes taken talk about a daily reality, captured perceiving its caducity, testifying still today to each of the city’s following incarnations.

The exhibition’s opening - to be held at the gallery on Saturday March 16 at 7.30 pm - will be introduced by an open public encounter with Ugo Nespolo at the Teatro Miela at 6 pm. In the Ridottino hall, in collaboration with Bonawentura, La Cappella Underground - Centro Ricerche e Sperimentazioni Cinematografiche e Audiovisive and the Casa del Cinema of Trieste, a selection of Nespolo’s short films, conceived during four decades, from Sixties’ Neoavanguardia to present day, will be screened.

In these experimental films the leading characters are played by well-established names of art and culture: La galante avventura del cavaliere dal lieto volto (1966-67) starring Lucio Fontana, Enrico Baj and Renato Volpini, Neonmerzare (1967) with Mario Merz, Boettinbianchenero (1968) with Alighiero Boetti, Buongiorno Michelangelo (1968-69) featuring Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio and Tommaso Trini, Con-certo rituale (1972-73) with Enrico Baj and Gianni Piacentino, Le porte girevoli (1982) inspired by a script donated by Man Ray, Film/a/To (2001) and Superglance (2007) with Edoardo Sanguineti.

Ugo Nespolo (b.1941, Mosso, Italy) is an artist, painter, filmmaker, designer and illustrator. He is based in Turin.

His research has never been linked to a single current or discipline. At his debut in the Sixties, when he relocated to New York, his practice was contaminated by Pop Art and in the Seventies by future conceptual artist and arte povera. A pioneer of Italian experimental cinema, he founded with Mario Schifano the Cinema degli Artisti.

His works have been exhibited at major international museums including Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Art Museum of China, GAM Torino, Castello Rivoli, MART, Collezione Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Museo Nazionale del Cinema.

Ugo Nespolo

Camera-Eye, notes from a distant New York

MLZ Art Dep

Trieste, March 16 to April 27, 2019

Opening hours: Tue-Wed 10 - 12am | Thu-Sat 5. pm to 7.30pm and by appointment

MLZ Art Dep is at no.14, Via Galatti Trieste