Sanlorenzo continues its journey towards contemporary photography. This time it is the lens of photographer Veronica Gaido who tells us about the shipyard and its production spaces in the exhibition “Dedalo”, on show from 13th May to 27th June in Venice in the De Maria rooms of the Casa dei Tre Oci, an exhibition space that over the years has become a reference point for photography thanks to the great exhibitions dedicated to the work of photographers such as Erwitt, Salgado, Berengo, Newton, LaChapelle, and which will also host the large retrospective dedicated to Mario De Biasi from 13th Mayto 9th January 2022.
“The prejudice that many photographers have towards colour photography, as Edward Weston so well reminded us, comes from not thinking of colour as form. There are things that can be said with colour that cannot be said in black and white.” Sergio Buttiglieri
Veronica Gaido amazes us with her use of colour, immersing us in a fascinating impressionistic nuance, which she has called “Dedalo”, because it leads us into this mythical labyrinth from which Sanlorenzo products are born, an expression of the best of Made in Italy, which still today holds over 50% of world production.
The routes between the scaffolding, the silhouettes of the factories, the piers, the cranes are all transfigured, thanks also to the skilful use of drones, in this dreamlike dimension that seems to travel on an unusual Z axis instead of the canonical X and Y, telling us about the complexity of the Sanlorenzo shipyard.
“I started thinking about my new project for Sanlorenzo from Daedalus, the mythical constructor of the labyrinth in Crete. A labyrinth, but only in a figurative sense, an intriguing movement of roads and passages where it is easy to lose one’s bearings, but in an abstract sense the ability to construct images charged with meaning linked to the life of things, the life of places and the life of humans.
Each work reflects a point of ‘lateral view’. In this case I used the labyrinth as a matrix of thought: I looked at the places of work from impossible angles, I choose lines that took me back into the complexity of life and these lines showed me the way out to photograph these large finished objects.
I used the lights of the boatyard as Ariadne’s red thread first to enter the labyrinth and then to understand the ways out. Each boat under construction reminds me of Maestri’s ancient wisdom, almost magical knowledge, with an idea of travel and mystery, and here we are again in the labyrinths: once released into the sea they will increasingly resemble human beings freed from birth within the labyrinth of life”. Veronica Gaido
Veronica’s photography relates well to our densely liquid times, paraphrasing the thoughts of the philosopher and sociologist Zygmun Bauman, a famous observer of post-modernity and its fleeting mutations. These are dynamics that this exhibition, thanks also to the layout designed by Studio Lissoni in collaboration with Alpi, Artemide and Bellotti, succeeds in making us perceive, showing us the secret beauty of the forms and iconicity of the industrial structures of the shipyard, imbued with precious craftsmanship, without necessarily resorting to the obvious representations of the final product.
A story “in nuce” even more fitting to tell the uniqueness of Sanlorenzo in unhinging clichés about the nautical world and to appreciate its attention to art and contemporary design.
“Dedalo”
Veronica Gaido
Casa dei Tre Oci – Venice
13th May – 27th June
Curator: Enrico Mattei
