Bildarchive 5: Lorenza Lucchi Basili
May 1 – September 16, 2008
Spinnereistrasse, 7, building 20A
04179 Leipzig
Germany
Tue-Sat 11am-6pm
tel. +49 – 341 – 47 84 141
archivmassiv [at] spinnerei.de
Spinnerei archiv massiv is proud to present Bildarchive 5, showcasing a site-specific project of Lorenza
Lucchi Basili.
For each step of Bildarchive, Spinnerei archiv massiv invites international artists to develop a photographic project on Spinnerei, a huge, former cotton spinning mill complex extending over 70,000 square meters of active surface, distributed in 23 distinct buildings. Today Spinnerei is home to many international art galleries, artists’ studios, workshops, commercial and service activities, and represents the core of the Leipzig art scene. It has received substantial international press coverage as one of today’s global hot spots of contemporary art. As more and more new tenants come in to use and inhabit previously abandoned spaces, Spinnerei is subject to a constant flux of physical, perceptual, and psychological change. The aim of the Bildarchive project is to build a non-documentary narrative of this flux by asking artists with different backgrounds and approaches to photographical work to provide a personal, entirely unconstrained account of their experience of Spinnerei as a physical, social, symbolic, economic space.
Lucchi Basili has developed her Bildarchive project during a one-month residence at Spinnerei, following a short preliminary visit. Lorenza began her residence without a specific idea in mind, and let it develop through the daily interaction with the place. As the complex’s buildings had been photographed so many times already, she tried to question their conventional imagery. She has found a most striking foundation for an alternative approach to Spinnerei in its receptive mutability to the ever-changing light and weather conditions that are typical of Leipzig’s early Spring, and that paved the way to a perceptual and conceptual conundrum. In her photos, Lorenza has eliminated any recognizable reference to the present age, developing a somewhat suspended imagery that seems to refer to Spinnerei’s past epochs, thereby evoking a sequence of layers of meaning that have piled up during its existence.
The images presented in the exhibition, six large, coupled 120×180 cm chromogenic prints in the main exhibition room, and a smaller 105×70 cm one at the space’s entrance, are only a partial outcome of the project. They establish a subtle dialectics among four of the space’s possible layers of meaning. The postcard set which accompanies each step of the Bildarchive project has been turned by Lucchi Basili into a project in itself, nested within the exhibition project, and presenting a sequence of ten images that define a conceptual and visual loop on one of Spinnerei’s less recognized identities. Any of the other communication materials of the exhibition, including the present release, contain more selected image samples from the overall project, suggesting a possible trans-media and almost viral expansion. The whole body of work of Lucchi Basili’s Spinnerei project will be eventually collected in a forthcoming monographic book, currently in progress.
Lucchi Basili will have another solo show in Germany later this year at uqbar Project Room in Berlin, within the framework of the 3rd European Month of Photography.
