NYAB Event - Francesco Palombi “Mente Originaria / Original Mind”

Francesco Palombi “Mente Originaria / Original Mind”

Baxter Street/ the Camera Club of NY

This event has ended.

“Mente Originaria / Original Mind,” a solo exhibition by 2013 CCNY Darkroom Resident Francesco Palombi, uses black and white images as part of a creative process that combines photography with drawing and sculpture. This exhibition marks the first of four solo exhibitions from the recipients of the 2013 CCNY Darkroom Residency Program.

Francesco Palombi says about this project:

“Mente Originaria / Original Mind is my attempt to create images that represent an internal space / the mind.

A portrait of my mind that presents a duality between harmony and darkness.

Dissatisfied by photography as a passive observation of the outside reality, I suddenly felt the urge to create.

My approach switched from taking a photograph to building a photograph.

“Original”, as I mean it, comes from origin and it speaks about my instinctive way of creating.

It happened by itself. Without any knowledge about sculpture and drawing, I found myself using clay, wires, paint along with other materials, combining them in black and white images as final results.

Although I was making studio photographs, I had no real control of them. They were coming as they wanted and every final photograph was unexpected.

I wasn’t planning them, and whenever I tried, I failed.

I just had to wait, trying to be patient and hoping that that inexplicable and sort of magical feeling would come and expose my film.

And that’s why Original Mind.

Because I believe that when we create something that comes spontaneously out of us, it comes from a deeper, unknown part of the mind, maybe, the origin.”

Born in 1991, Francesco Palombi is an artist from Rome, Italy. After moving to New York, Palombi attended the General Studies Program at the International Center of Photography in 2012. Palombi is a recipient of the 2012 Alan Model scholarship, and his work has been shown in several group shows around US. The process of printing in the darkroom embraces his ideas and plays a critical role in his work. Palombi currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.