After the launch at The Photographers' Gallery and at RED Gallery in London, Jarach Gallery is pleased to present, for the first time in Italy, "The Looking Game”, an exhibition by M. F. G. Paltrinieri and Mirko Smerdel, which takes its title and draws inspiration from the homonymous book they published back in 2013.

“The Looking Game” (published by Discipula edition in collaboration with Akina Books) offers an innovative point of view on the photographic medium starting from the connection between the shots of Rodney Alcala, an American serial killer and amateur photographer active at the turn of the Seventies and the alias he used during his escape: John Berger, just like the renowned British art critic, author of the famous Tv series Ways of Seeing. Was it just a peculiar coincidence or Alcala actually knew John Berger’s work?

Paltrinieri and Smerdel’s editorial project compares some of Berger’s writings with the images taken from the serial killer’s archive, found by the police officers of Huntington Beach, California, and published online in 2010. Starting from there, the authors construct a narrative that investigates the multi-level relationship between photographer and photographed as well as the act of shooting and the possible interpretations of the resulting images.

The installation Paltrinieri and Smerdel will put on display at Jarach Gallery represents a not just physical but also conceptual extension of their editorial project.

By recombining the original material used for the book with notes and theoretical observations developed by the authors, the exhibition moves from the study of the Alcala — Berger relationship, this time putting the visitors and their own personal experience with the photographic image to center stage.

Mirko Smerdel. Born in Prato (Italy) in 1978, currently lives and works in Milan. He attended the two-year MA program in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. In 2011 he wins the Menabrea Art Prize, Rome, and in 2010 he is selected among the final twenty competitors of the Sovereign Art Prize, London. From 2010 to 2013 he is assistant professor in Sculpture, Visual Arts Department, at NABA, Milan. Since 2013 he’s co-founder of Discipula, a platform for research and an independent publishing house.

Smerdel’s analysis is mainly concerned with observation and cataloguing of pre-existing images and objects: amateur photographs, videos, magazines and more. His work starts from a found, seemingly unimportant, item, which is then contextualized in a broader visual research on Image and History. At the core of his work there is the purpose to decipher and reconstruct some facts by framing them into networks of relations, comparisons and similarities, through an approach to the document as if it were a trace, evidence of a disappeared reality. In his research, a special focus is devoted to the anonymous gaze, which can be considered to be “universal” since it can’t be ascribable to anybody specifically (nevertheless, it is dominated by factors that go beyond the author’s will), and to the amateur recording of a fact or event, which becomes a sort of magnifying lens or mirror to recontextualize private memories within the public sphere.

Marco Francesco Giuseppe Paltrinieri is an artist and publisher. Born in Milan in 1978, he lives and works in London. After graduating in Social Psychology and then earning a Master’s degree in Sociology at Roehampton University, London, in 2013 he founds Discipula Editions, a collective for research and an independent publishing house, together with Mirko Smerdel and Tommaso Tanini. He is co-author of the book The Looking Game and writer of Part of an Archipelago. Paltrinieri’s research revolves around the analysis of the processes of construction and representation of reality. More specifically, his work focuses on the way textual and photographic materials are used, either found or original, and on their reciprocal interaction through the exploration of different narrative strategies.

Jarach Gallery
San Marco, 1997
Venice 30124 Italy
Ph. +39 041 522 1938
info@jarachgallery.com

Opening hours
Tuesday - Saturday
From 2pm to 8 pm

Related images
1. Mirko Smerdel & M.F.G. Paltrinieri, Jarach Gallery Venezia, The Looking Game
2. The Unfolding, 2014, Site-specific installation, Acetate paper, cardboards and photos on wall, cm 550 x 200 (dettaglio)
3. Mirko Smerdel & M.F.G. Paltrinieri, Jarach Gallery Venezia, The Looking Game
4. The Spaces, 2013, n.4 framed prints: n.3 cm 70x100 + n.1 cm 70x160, Inkjet print on Canson Edition Etching Rag 310g
5. The Black Diagrams, 2014, n. 9 elements designed by the artists, Engraved plexiglass, MDF, cm 50
6. The Spaces, 2013, n.4 framed prints: n.3 cm 70x100 + n.1 cm 70x160, Inkjet print on Canson Edition Etching Rag 310g x 70