Mimmo Jodice (born in Naples in 1934) is one of the masters of Italian contemporary photography and his work is well-recognised at international level. His works on display range from his early experiments on codes, techniques and concepts to the inquiry on social themes in Naples and the south of Italy.
His huge and intense production covers a lapse of more than four decades, all the way through a complex inquiry on the contemporary scenarios of cities around the world, exploring the themes of archaeology, ancient art and Mediterranean cultures and finally landing to the narration of the sea as a place absolu.
This show, composed of more than forty works and organized in collaboration with the Municipality of Cinisello Balsamo, gathers the latest and deepest reflections of the artist and entwines two key themes: the idea of the sea as a vacuum, a no-scape place, silence and lingering time to be conceived as a reaction to the chaos of contemporary life and the persistence of the past into the present, through the representation of fragments of sculptured bodies and faces as left-overs from the classical age in the Mediterranean civilization, which the sea itself has been in charge of preserving, reshaping and finally returning to us.
In Jodice's vision, the Mediterranean, the womb and workshop of history and culture, is a lyrical and mental place which allowed his early restless research to develop into the coincidence of images and emotion.
The name of the show, Mimmo Jodice. Figure del mare (Mimmo Jodice. Figures From The Sea), not only refers to the plasticity of ancient faces and bodies returning from the water but also to the sea itself as a source for the artist's inner thought and vision. An artist who has never intended photography as a descriptive and documentary instrument, Jodice is the promoter of a memory-loaded image, rich in the many art forms, pointing to a metaphysical concept of visible reality.