Luca Lupi “Landscapes”

Benrubi Gallery

[Image: Luca Lupi "Finis Terrae, Spiagge Bianche" (2017)]

This event has ended.

Benrubi Gallery presents the gallery’s first exhibition with Luca Lupi.

Aldo Sestini wrote in his 1963 work Il Paesaggio (The Landscape) that the Italian “landscape acquires higher interest and offers more spiritual pleasure when it is observed by those who are able to recognize the compositional elements, the peculiar variety and the natural and human factors that contributed to form it.” Landscapes brings together a selection of works from an ongoing series by Italian photographer Luca Lupi, who rises to Sestini’s challenge with his interrogation of the evolving relation between ancient and modern, and organic and inorganic forces in defining contemporary Italian identity and the regional landscapes that so profoundly shape it.

In capturing the geological and architectural diversity of the bel paese, Lupi invites a modular reading of the Italian coastline, the compositional consistency of his images permitting a continuous and endlessly reconfigurable sequence where built and natural elements are flattened and reduced to their formal properties. Toying with the viewers’ sense of scale, a sublime and boundless sky nearly consumes each frame, transforming the unique details of each landscape into exquisite ornaments; a majestic Tuscan terrace mirrors a strip of narrow white beach, while the cathedrals and cemeteries of ancient Venice appear not grand and imposing but as delicately hewn as tiny watercolors.

Born in Pontedara, Pisa in 1970, award-winning Italian photographer Luca Lupi currently lives and works in Fucecchio, Florence. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. He recently won the Photomed Festival 2017 for his Landscapes series, and has had the work presented in solo exhibitions including Landscapes, Emon Photo Gallery, Tokyo (2016); Still, Cardelli & Fontana artecontemporanea, Sarzana (SP, 2016); Infinito Presente, Sincresis Arte, Empoli (FI, 2015); Spazi, Museo di Fucecchio, Florence (2014); Landscapes, Anne Clergue Galerie, Arles, France (2014); Viewpoint, Le Murate, Florence (2011).