DéVoilées
Solo Show
Auditorium/Bookshop Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo
13th September 2018
Alessandro Vasapolli’s exhibition DéVoilées, curated by Valerio Consonni and presented at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, brought together fifteen large-format works from the artist’s first major photographic series. Set within the spaces of the foundation’s bookshop and auditorium, the show offered an intimate yet conceptually charged exploration of visibility, identity, and the thresholds of perception. The opening, held on September 13th, was accompanied by a public conference hosted in the auditorium of the foundation, framing the exhibition within a wider critical dialogue.
DéVoilées unfolds through a sequence of portraits in which the figure, always seen from behind, is suspended between presence and disappearance. Each image refuses full disclosure, inviting viewers to inhabit a space of ambiguity where recognition is deferred and meaning emerges only gradually. The subjects do not perform for the camera—they remain silent, turned away, evoking a presence that is at once intimate and unreachable.
This deliberate withholding becomes a strategy through which the series investigates the act of seeing itself. Vision is not treated as a neutral channel, but as a complex, mediated encounter shaped by memory, expectation, and desire. The photographs operate as perceptual thresholds—images that reveal less than they conceal, and in doing so, speak more powerfully about what lies beyond the visible.
The visual language of the series is rooted in a rigorous experimental process: optical filters, algorithmic color systems, and hand-painted backgrounds are all part of a larger attempt to unmoor photography from its documentary function. No digital manipulation is employed; the images are created entirely in-camera, through devices and techniques designed by the artist himself.
⚬ Conference
⚬ Vernissage
⚬ Article on “Il Corriere della Sera” | “‘DéVoilées’, la schiena nuda è arte: la mostra alla Fondazione Sandretto”
⚬ Article on “La Stampa” | “‘DéVoilées: le schiene velate di Alessandro Vasapolli”
⚬ Article on “La Stampa / Torino7” | “Colore in fotografia”
⚬ Article on “Artribune” | “Alessandro Vasapolli – DéVoilées”
Curatorial Statement
DéVoilées
by Valerio Consonni
The exhibition gathers seventeen photographs taken from Alessandro Vasapolli’s project “DéVoilées”.
The essential traits that have influenced his poetic have to be found in his scientific modus operandi blended with a love for humanities. An attentive observation of the work leads to the intuition of a temporality unrelated to history and single cultures.The images become the visible and partial fragments of an invisible and vast reality; they are expressions of poetic energy murmured through the lightness of forms and subtlety of colors. Slowly, an almost crystalline solidity of the backgrounds emerges, the fine research for the posture of the bodies, the randomness of a veil or of a crease of the skirt… The tresses are reminiscent of algae, floating anemones, spiral volutes, and acanthus-adorned capitals… Then, there are the veils. They appear to drop from the sky, pierced by a gleam that alights and overflows like water on a riverbank.
The Ancients teach that Nature loves to hide.
The event unfolds at the heart, the very depth of the work. As we immerse ourselves in an emotional universe, it is incumbent on us to weave threads together. Our task is to lift the veils, to search for a secret path, an unveiling.
Vasapolli’s research unifies art and reflection, imagination and reality, space and bodies, in an attempt to give expression and shape to something mysterious that escapes words.
DéVoilées
by Valerio Consonni
La mostra raccoglie diciassette fotografie appartenenti al progetto “DéVoilées” di Alessandro Vasapolli.
I tratti essenziali che hanno maggiormente determinato la sua poetica vanno individuati nel suo modus operandi scientifico coniugato ad un amore verso le humanities. Un’attenta osservazione dell’opera porta all’intuizione di una temporalità estranea alla storia e alle culture particolari. Le immagini diventano le parti visibili e parziali di una realtà invisibile e immensa, espressioni di una forza poetica sussurrata attraverso la leggerezza delle forme e la soavità dei colori. Piano piano emerge una solidità quasi cristallina dei fondali, la ricerca minuta delle posture dei corpi, dell’accidentalità di un velo o di una piega della gonna… Le capigliature ricordano alghe, anemoni fluttuanti, volute a spirali, capitelli ornati di acanto… Poi i veli. Sembrano cadere dal cielo traversati da un chiarore che si posa e tracima come l’acqua sui bordi dei fiumi.
La natura ama nascondersi, insegnano gli antichi.
L’evento avviene là in fondo, nella profondità dell’opera. Immergendoci in un universo emozionale spetta a noi tessere i fili. È nostro compito sollevare i veli, cercare un cammino segreto, uno svelamento.
La ricerca di Vasapolli unisce arte e riflessione, immaginazione e realtà, spazi e corpi, in un tentativo di dare espressione e corpo visivo a un qualcosa di misterioso che sfugge alla parola.