News from Wonderland with Linda Fregni Nagler
"In her approach to photography, Linda Fregni Nagler brings together the figure of the artist - in the traditional sense -, that of the collector and that of the researcher. She recreates, re-photographs or presents in unaltered form the photographs she has collected over the years - mainly anonymous images from the 19th and first half of the 20th century - in order to explore their tradition, their cultural and anthropological conventions and their iconographic models, and to allow us, through her presentation strategies, to see them in new ways." (Simone Menegoi)
News from Wonderland tells of a labyrinth of mirrors that deforms, distorts and fragments photographs from 20th century US magazines that revolve around the relationship between humans and animals.
Linda Fregni Nagler is interested in the components of the photographic process - light, time, optical devices - and has used concave or fragmented mirrors to re-photograph the image in question as it undergoes a process of change in form and composition. The reflection in the deforming surface erases those elements that constitute the pictorial space of the original photograph: One part is distorted, another duplicated, another completely obscured. The experimental arrangement makes us aware that the eye and the lens do not see in the same way. In conceiving the exhibition, the artist focused on precisely this problem: the question of the camera's actual ability to capture what the human eye can see. The choice of perspective and point of view is also of crucial importance: even a few millimetres change the distortion macroscopically and consequently the perception of the new image created by the reflection. Like clues in a puzzle to be solved, different versions of one and the same original photograph intersect in the exhibition, making the viewer want to identify related images. As we try to piece together a sequence, however, our ability to fully understand the original image remains limited.
Unlike Luna Park, where the Mirror Maze gleefully distorts and warps our reflection, leaving us with the calm awareness of having witnessed an illusion, these photographs perpetuate that very illusion, allowing us to enter a surreal world that changes our perception and understanding of what we are looking at.
Linda Fregni Nagler (born 1976 in Stockholm, lives in Milan) has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 55th Venice Biennale. She has also exhibited in renowned museums in Italy (MAXXI Rome, Fondazione Olivetti Rome, Triennale Milan, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo) and abroad (Moderna Museet Stockholm, Centre National d'Art Contemporain de Grenoble, Columbia University NY, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe).
Her solo exhibition 'LINDA FREGNI NAGLER: Reordering Photography: Blickinszenierungen' is currently running at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (until 7.1.2024).
In 2007, she received the New York Prize from the Department of State and Columbia University. In 2014 she was awarded a residency at Iaspis (Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual Artists) in Stockholm and in 2016 she received the ACACIA Award.
Monographs on her work have been published by Mack Books (London) "The Hidden Mother" and Humboldt Books (Milan) "Hercule Florence. Le Nouveau Robinson" and "Yama no Shashin". She is professor of photography at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and teaches theories and techniques of photography at the IULM University of Milan.
