THE PHAIR 2023

For The Phair 2023, Galleria Il Ponte presents the photographic work of three artists from three different generations: Rosa Foschi, Marina Ballo Charmet and Zoé Gruni.
They are three artists that the gallery has represented for years, except for Marina Ballo Charmet, a first exhibition of whose work is set to open in the gallery on 24 May.
The works by Rosa Foschi are part of a set of 10×10 cm Polaroids (1988–1996) in which the artist plays with still lifes and portraits. The images make continual references to poetic or artistic-figurative cultural situations put together for the next shot in a complex mise en scène.
The photographs by Marina Ballo Charmet – inkjet colour prints entitled Tatay (“father” in Filipino, 2022–2023) made by playing with strong overexposures – are part of a project on male parenthood, the father-son relationship captured in various moments of complicity, suggesting an intimacy, a tactile and olfactive closeness.
The works by Zoé Gruni fit into her way of working, based on the body and its disguising. In this case, the artist intervenes on some photographic self-portraits using drawing and mixed technique to create a set of works called Aladina (2018–2019). The name comes from a great-aunt of hers, a partisan messenger during the Resistance, of whom no photographic images exist, in a homage to women’s resilience, from memory to the present day.