Michele Dantini is an art critic and curator, photographer (he studied photography under Michael Yamashita), videomaker and author of travel diaries. His most recent exhibitions include: 2001 Children’s Art Museum, Palazzo Pubblico, Magazzini del Sale, Siena, presenting iceberg images together with interviews with ARTIC, environmentalists and marine biologists. In 2002, Strange Stories, Palazzo Strozzi and Villa la Loggia, Florence, audio and video installations with images of the largest African cities, colonial buildings and ethnographic studies from local museums.
Five (un) ambiguous statements upon distance and beauty, Galleria Alessandro De March, Milan, a sort of blend of fine arts and socio-environmental reportage. An experiment on the theme of ‘travels through the neighbourhood’ theorised by anthropologist Marc Augè, an enquiry into an intimate landscape and botanical photographs. By means of a change of scale subjects become large, surprise us and get us observing them, paying greater attention to common flowers which we normally ignore in our daily lives.
In 2003 the Working exhibition at Florence’s Stazione Leopolda where he imagined a public space (GeaLab) for the future Florence Centro di Arte Contemporanea; he took part in Weeds, 10th International Photography Biennial, Fondazione Italiana di Fotografia, Turin. Also worthy of note are his 2001 book Diario Nambiniano which was reprinted in 2003, a study on South Africa’s politics and institutions which was short-listed for the Paolo Biocca prize in 2002 organised by the Italo Calvino society and the L’indice journal.
His projects revolve around themes of mobility, political and social geography on one hand and the mental processes implied by exploration behaviour on the other. Frequently conceived on the occasion of travels in far off and relatively remote places, videos, photographs and text-works explore the polarities existing in field research and fine art aesthetics.
Fragments of story-telling aim at an articulation of cultural differences to demonstrate a complexity (environmental, social and cultural) which is frequently neglected by Western media to stimulate non-hegemonic attitudes. Anti-narrative and anti-documentary choices prompt purely sensory responses in spectators while at the same time taking them in first person to face up to experiences of loss, surprise, contemplativeness and amazement. His solo exhibitions include: Zmeiniy Project, Tsekh Gallery, Fedorova Cultural Foundation, Kiev, 2010; Cythère, Villa Bardini, Florence, 2009; Baedeker, Parco Bardini, Florence, 2007; A Green Nothing, Fondazione Merz, Turin, 2007; No breaking news, Kunsthalle Montforthaus, Feldkirch [A], 2004. His collective exhibitions have included: La revanche de l’archive photographique, Centre de la Photographie, Genéve, 2010; Green Platform, Centro di cultura contemporanea Strozzina, Florence, 2009; 1988. Vent’anni prima, vent’anni dopo, Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, 2009; Schreibstation, Stiftung Galerie für Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig, 2004.
Marawa Drawings
This is how Michele Dantini’s work was presented at the Nel fiume in piena: Nuovo paesaggio urbano tra arte e architettura held at Villa Renatico Martini in 2011:
“Dantini focuses his research on an attempt to deconstruct the modern myth of rational, standardised architecture. His frequent journeys amongst non-European peoples make no attempt to tell of otherness, of exotic and different men but rather aim to cast doubt on our very own perceptions of the West, of its nature and architecture.
The Marawa Drawings series, specially conceived for the exhibition, rereads certain architectural details of the Neo-Classical villa which hosts Mac,n. The artist has in fact recreated the forms and styles betrayed by architecture’s Neo-Classical ambitions in favour of elements from colonial traditions. Ferdinando Martini, the late 19th century Italian intellectual and politician who commissioned the villa, had in fact been governor of the Italian colonies of the day in Africa and lived in Marawa city.
The drawings are thus an individual and collective journey which attempts to narrow the fictional colonial gap introducing a human and neighbourhood dimension to architecture which is full of unwritten spaces.
“Nature is, on the contrary, this wonderful replenishment which is not spectacle; […] all these elements do not lead to a conclusion with which we can say: nature is this. No. Nature’s contribution is precisely this ongoing problematic: an open debate which can never be closed.
We tend frequently to subject nature to a human dimension. Especially in America certain architects have tried to exalt nature, cancelling themselves out in it. […] I remember seeing a small detail in the window frames in one of Michelangelo’s buildings, a small chiaroscuro element, a little shell. Well, all nature was there in that ultra-simple chiaroscuro, the whole universe” (Giovanni Michelucci).
mm 210x297