3 February 2022 – 3 March 2022
DENIS PIEL
DOWN TO EARTH”
DENIS PIEL DOWN TO EARTH 3rd FEBRUARY – 3rd MARCH 2022
From February 3rd to March 3rd 2022 Galleria Gracis hosts “Down to Earth”, the first major exhibition in Italy by the international photographer and director Denis Piel. The exhibition is organised by Luca Gracis in collaboration with Valerio Tazzetti, whose contemporary art gallery in Turin, Photo&Contemporary, will host it from Tuesday 8 th March to 3 rd April 2022. The title evokes a fall, a return to the essential, to realism, to the myth of origin: Piel’s project is, in fact, a celebration of nature and fertility, which correlates bodies and earth, growth and death, rural and urban, nature and culture, apparent opposites that interpenetrate in the shots he made digitally with a Hasselblad H4D at Chateau de Padiès. It is here, in southwestern France, that Piel moved with his wife and child after 9/11, in a sort of retreat from the world, which had lost his innocence, to live in closer contact with nature, rediscovering the cycles of life and the need to do one’s own to safeguard mother earth from the climate change crisis. The works, which are inspired by the sustainable and regenerative organic agriculture practiced in Les Jardins du Château de Padiès, portray the natural world, revisiting classical mythology and creating echoes with the history of Western art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cultivated lands, woods, harvest products, male and female bodies at rest and at work weave parallels with iconic and mythical works: naked, like nymphs and satyrs, they breathe and pulsate within the images, inhabiting an almost dreamlike landscape, beyond the space and time, but equally imbued with life. The predominance of black and white enhances textures and shapes, creating a strong contrast with the four images that close the exhibition in an explosion of colors, which restores the concreteness and sensuality of the material, enhancing it in the beauty of its perfection. Alongside the images from Down to Earth, the exhibition also features Everyday Reality, a series of portraits of workers who contributed to the maintenance and production of Les Jardins du Chàteau de Padiès through the WWOOF organization: these represent both an aspect of Down to Earth. Earth laid bare, is the animating breath of the project. A special edition of “Down to Earth”, containing a limited edition print will be available for sale within the exhibition. Denis Piel was born in France on 1st March 1944, raised in Australia and educated in the United States. He currently lives in the southwest France. He is an international acclaimed award-winning photographer and filmmaker, primarily recognised for his influential approach to fashion photography in the 1980s, when he worked as a photographer for Condé Nast, shooting for over a decade more than 1000 editorial spreads for US, German, Italian, French, English Vogue, Vanity Fair, Self and Gentlemen’s Quarterly, and also producing many celebrity portraits. As Piel’s career progressed, his working method as a photographer-director turned into a committed interest in filmmaking: in 1985 he founded and ran Jupiter Films, an internationally successful film production company, with which he shot many commercials for international clients. After 9/11, Piel and his family moved permanently to Lempaut in the southwest of France to live and work at the Château de Padiès, a medieval and Renaissance castle that they have been restoring since 1992: the property includes the castle and Les Jardin du Château de Padiès, an experiment in agroecology and developed according to the principles of permaculture and sustainable development. Padiès and the local environment have become a source of inspiration for Piel and the focus of his current photographic practice. Piel’s photographs can be found in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and The Museum of Fine Art in Boston, as well as in numerous private collections, including the BES photographic collection and the Antonio Champalimaud collections. Press Office Guardans-Cambó Tel. 02 43990159 e-mail: press@guardanscambo.com Monday – Friday 10 am 1 pm | 2 pm – 6 pm