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Paola Di Bello
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Concrete Island

1996-2001

 

What happens to objects that are no longer useful? We might respond that usually they are thrown in the wastebin, but that would be insufficient, because the question is a metaphysical one. Bergson posed the same question and responded metaphysically: when something is no longer useful it begins, simply, to be.

Gilles Deleuze, The movement-image, 1983

Concrete Island is a series of photographs of objects thrown into a dump or simply left at some street corner in the suburbs. The pictures are shot from the objects' “point of view”. The idea was to take the pictures from the object's side, from the side of the things' world. It is not the objects who have lost their function and identity, it is rather their owners and the world who have lost the capability to see the things' function and identity.

 

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  • “Home Less Home”, curated by Maria Fratelli, Casa della Memoria, Milano, 2021

  • “Stati di Tensione”, curated by Carlo Sala, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Milano, 2018

  • “Marge e altri paesaggi”, curated by Luca Panaro, Museo civico Giovanni Fattori, Livorno, 2017

  • “Paola Di Bello. Milano Centro”, curated by Gabi Scardi, Museo del Novecento, Milano, 2016

  • “Homeless' Home”, curated by Raffaella Perna, Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Firenze, 2016

  • “Peripheral Vision: Italian Photography in Context”, curated by Antonella Pelizzari, The Berta and Karl Leubsdorf Art

    Gallery, New York, 2012
  • “Uno sguardo italiano”, curated by Elio Grazioli, Fotografins Hus, Stockholm, 2011

  • “Concrete Island”, Luciano Inga-Pin Gallery, Milano, 1999

  • “Sold out”, No admittance, Milano, 1998

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