Photographs from Gianfranco Pezzot’s Resorts series will be on view at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery February 5th through March 20th, 2009. This is Gianfranco Pezzot’s first solo exhibition at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery. There will be an opening reception on February 5th from 6-9pm.
There is a metaphysical sense of emptiness in closed rolling shutters, empty swimming pools and silent dwellings. Gianfranco Pezzot explores the epilogue of idyllic holiday resorts in this series. Inviting scenery is isolated from its usual friendly connotations. Like ghost towns, they give us the feeling of an artificial aesthetic, built just for holidays then quickly abandoned. There is a recognition here of a kind of ancestral emotion as well: the notion of something ending. In a contemplative atmosphere, time takes a rest.
By focusing on the shape of these places within a calm palette, Pezzot demonstrates the acceptance of the inevitable. There are no people in the photographs, only the faintest trace and suggestion of their influence. The shift of summer's ending extends to the buildings, accentuated by pure white, perfectly still lines. Places appear to lose their purpose and become neutral, freed from their holiday ambitions.
Gianfranco Pezzot, b. 1969, is an Italian conceptual photographer interested in the ways we shape, use and experience the environments we create. His work has been published in several books, catalogs and magazines, including K*MoPA's "Photographs by the Next Generation" museum book, New York Magazine, Eyemazing, and International Biennial of Contemporary Art Exhibitions, and can be found in the permanent collection of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan). Pezzot is a graduate of the Drama Academy of Venice, Italy.