Giovanna Petrocchi

In Zones of Proximity, collage landscapes create surreal assemblages that challenge our understanding of what elements or images may be brought together.

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Zones of Proximity

“Zones of Proximity hints at a distant paradisiacal terrain. With subtle abstractions and glowing colours, I allude to alternate worlds in which nature plays a prominent part. These scenes are at once familiar and foreign. They are a reaction and response to places I have either seen depicted, or imagined. Both imagination and memory feed into creating these evocative moments. I like to think of each collage as a small scene, as a moment in this invented scenario that convey my idea of the perfect landscape. These images are somehow the result of my urge to find the ideal aesthetic that I struggle to identify in our ordinary experiences. I also consider this collection of landscapes as an excuse to investigate and define our associations to “place” and experience. In my case collage functions as a transitional tool, allowing through the act of inclusion and exclusion of fragments, a formation of a space outside of reality. In subverting the lines between real and imagined, my aim is to question the visibility of the landscape we inhabit and create an opening for new narratives to form. Imaginary places become spaces that allow an individual interpretation of experience, one that is both visual and instinctive. It is relevant to stress that these landscapes are untouched and consequently exempt of human experience. They illustrate that the representation of nature no longer depends exclusively on the direct experience of reality, but on the interpretation of previous images, on representations that already exist (paintings, drawings and illustrations that I collected). Besides, by the simple act of looking at this images they automatically become experience and find a place in our mental imagery, they become memories even though neither the viewer nor the author physically visited these places.”

– Giovanna Petrocchi, Photographer and Collage Artist

Giovanna Petrocchi’s artistic purpose is to stimulate the viewers’ imagination through the camouflage of the photograph, which she often blends with other art forms. While investigating the history of art and visual reproduction, Giovanna  aims to emphasize the aesthetic quality of the image as well as its seductiveness. She is interested in the imagined and the unsaid, the poetic and the unseen. The use of collage enables her to create surreal assemblages that contradict our understanding of what elements or images may be brought together. By juxtaposing realities and creating unexpected associations, the work becomes a collection of fragments, allowing the viewer to invent and construct their own stories.

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a_birds-are-artists-too-

a_Camouflage

a_Cezanne's-dream

a_counterfactuals

a_in-the-meantime-

 

a_Life

a_Shelter

a_solitude-is-not-loneliness-copy

a_summer-solstice-

a_The-black-sheep

a_the-last-chance a_the-slow-island

a_two-moons-and-one-bird

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Giovanna Petrocchi is an Italian fine art photographer who lives and works in London.

She recently graduated from the BA Photography course at the London College of Communication where she received the Flowers Gallery photo prize 2015.

View more of her work on her website or Instagram.

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