Bio­gra­phy

A native of Cala­bria, artist Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo (born 1986), has worked as a pho­to­gra­pher since he was fif­teen years old. While at Rome’s Uni­ver­sity La Sapi­enza years later, he com­bi­ned Archi­tec­tu­ral Stu­dies with Pho­to­gra­phy and Con­tem­porary Art to earn a degree in Gra­phic and Mul­ti­me­dia Design. Wit­hin this same year, his photo pro­ject, “I Stay Here,” which deals with the emi­gra­tion of youth from sou­thern Italy, was on view in an exhi­bi­tion for the first time. In 2011 his series, “New Facade,” crea­ted a sen­sa­tion by beco­m­ing the basis of a fea­ture film. Howe­ver, his inter­na­tio­nal bre­ak­th­rough came in 2012 with a René Magritte-inspired series, “Levi­ta­tion.” As Mag­ritte was depen­dent on paint and can­vas to phy­si­cally por­tray a visual idea, Lo Schiavo trans­fer­red his visual ideas via see­min­gly life-like pho­to­gra­phy directly in the ima­gi­na­tion of the viewer, repla­c­ing Magritte’s obvious arti­fi­cia­lity of pain­ting with a strai­ght­for­ward depic­tion for the ima­gi­na­tion. It is only con­sis­tent that the Par­thenon, the Colos­seum, the Eif­fel Tower or the Taj Mahal appear on floa­ting rocks. For Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo, these images depict “not the actual rea­lity but they illus­trate a ‘uni­verse’ made of thoughts, the free­dom of ima­gi­nary poten­tia­lity of the unconscious­ness to ‘levi­tate’ and achieve cogni­tive levels that sur­pass rea­lity”.
On the other hand, his latest series, “Ad Vivum,” ties to the history of art, namely Dutch por­trai­ture of the 15th cen­tury. The color and imagery con­trasts, howe­ver, are inten­sely under­played. Wit­hin the clas­sic por­traits of female sit­ters in non­de­script loca­ti­ons, there lies res­trai­ned emo­tion. This emo­tion is set up as an inter­ac­tion bet­ween the expres­siv­en­ess of the model, the artist’s sen­si­tively orches­tra­ted visual con­cept, and the emo­tio­nal com­pre­hen­sion of the viewer, who also attempts to cal­cu­late the pre­vai­ling theme.
The term “ad Vivum” (Latin for “mode­led after nature”), is used to describe por­trai­ture of the 15th and 16th cen­tu­ries and pos­tu­late the grea­test pos­si­ble liken­ess of the image when com­pa­red to the sit­ter. The­re­fore, this main­tains a recipro­cal level of mea­ning, because the pho­to­graphs show models whose fair com­ple­xion and sta­tu­es­que poses do not sug­gest natu­ral essence. The pho­to­graph and image seem mutually exclu­ded; and the tra­di­tio­nal notion of liken­ess is under­mined.
Giu­seppe Lo Schiavo’s pho­to­graphs have been seen on view in inter­na­tio­nal venues, such as London’s Saatchi Gal­lery, Istanbul’s Mixer Art Gal­lery, and the 2013 Expo­sure Awards 4th Annual Pho­to­gra­phy Com­pe­ti­tion at the Aper­ture Gal­lery in New York.

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