The works of Aurore Valade are made to be read. You need to be curious, let your gaze run across the whole image then go into the details, studying every single part. Just like when you read a book.As we approach Valade’s works, let us take our time and give them all the attention they deserve. Let us read the writings, study the poses, geometries, references: for nothing in these images is accidental - everything talks and waits to be interpreted. Architectures, spaces, objects, characters and faces move within the general compositional harmony: like a gaze or the traits of a face, the scars and signs of aging, they tell us about the different stages of life and individual history, all condensed in a face that turns to us, as Lévinas would have it, with the urgency of an existential issue, as pressing as it is unavoidable.

For this exhibiting project, entitled L’or gris (the third with Gagliardi Art System) Aurore Valade chose an unusual, daring subject as her guideline: old age. This could be the best example of photographic images as ‘theory’, in its literal meaning as sequence, but also as reasoning that leads to results and helps formulate new questions, which in turn raise new issues.The artist carries out an in-depth study of this topic, in its less predictable aspects. Her reflection then extends to time and its passing, to the private, personal history of the portrayed subjects. Sometimes she deals with more theoretical, paradigmatic topics that have to do with our present situation, such as motherhood later in life, the sense of history, the relationship with childhood, love, death… with frequent references to the classical iconography of art history. Old age can even become a sort of new golden age: a ‘grey gold’ we might say, using a current French expression that describes the social, sometimes also economic, potential that elderly people have today in our communities.

The senility Valade talks about is also, or above all, that of our world and our social models. We could try to think about this age of the soul as the place of essentiality, of being constructive and authentic, and most of all, as the god Saturn wanted of the Greeks, as the place of evolution and change. In other words, it is a time for becoming what we are, as Nietzsche put it, without telling tales, making excuses, or harboring illusions. As many works in this exhibition seem to suggest, it is not old people whom we have to reject or “discard”, but old ideas, which make us older, wearing out our body and spirit: here lies true renewal and the fulfillment of our dreams. The artist created part of the images on display during her residencies in France, in particular in Bordeaux and in La Napoule.

Gagliardi Art System
Via Cervino, 16
Turin 10155 Italy
Tel. +39 011 19700031
gallery@gasart.it
www.gasart.it

Opening hours
From tuesday to saturday
3:30pm to 7:30pm or by appointment