VERONICA MECCHIA
TERRA
June 19th to September 23rd 2023
Curator: Francesca Cominelli
Opening June 19th 2023
Sorbonne Artgallery is pleased to present Veronica Mecchia's TERRA series, on view from June 19th to September 23rd 2023. This exhibition is organized with the kind permission of Remèdes Gallery.
Originally, it was Gaia, the earth, mother earth. Arid, exploited, impoverished, she continues to generate life, a flower. This succession of photographs immerses us in the intimate world of Veronica Mecchia, who becomes earth, water, stone, sun, tree. Her gaze rests, without judgment and with humility, on the immensity of nature, which observes and welcomes her. These are moments, self-portraits of eternity, that shelter the time that precedes us, that will follow us, and that leave us suspended in the only moment that counts: the present. It is here that everything becomes one, opposing forces reconciled, the majesty of the forest and its pillars revealed.
A piece of earth,
A sunflower,
A rock to seek
The illusion of shelter
An agave that flies away
Its destiny, imperturbable
A lake from which to re-emerge,
A tree to cling to
To rise again
An ancient thonaire
Its columns without capitals, without era
Reaching for the sky
Pillars become trees
The forest becomes a temple.
Distant words emerge.
"Nature is a temple where living pillars
sometimes let out confused words;
Man passes through forests of symbols
Who watch him with familiar eyes."
-Baudelaire-
TERRA is a series of nine self-portraits through which we discover the work of photographer Veronica Mecchia. It is above all a personal journey. There is a 25-year gap between the first and last photographs. We are faced with a birth, a discovery, an awareness of a relationship with the world that passes through astonishment, concern, contemplation and acceptance.
TERRA is also a manifesto of the artist's work and her relationship with nature, which she shares with us and invites us to experience for ourselves. Veronica Mecchia unveils the poetry of the world, enjoining us to face the world, to be with the world. This relationship is made up of moments, destined to pass, while leaving traces and words.
TERRA is a call to the urgency of an intimate relationship with nature, its trees, its stones, its flowers, its waters, with the earth, Gaïa.
Francesca Cominelli
May 28, 2023
An Italian photographer born in Paris, Veronica Mecchia grew up in Milan, where she simultaneously studied art history and photography with Giuliana Traverso at the "Il Diaframma" Gallery in Milan. In 2003, she returned to Paris, where she continued her training in art history before devoting herself entirely to photography.
Her artistic filiation with the photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, whom she studied with in Italy (1997/1998), and whom she considers her mentor, is reflected in a compelling propensity to maintain an organic link with nature.
Her black & white photographic work explores the relationship between man and his environment in a personal version. Through assertive artistic choices (argentique, self-portraiture, black & white, nudity), she imprints her state of mind and reveals a unique identity with a universal character.
Poetically inscribing herself in the ephemeral, as if absorbed by the beauty of the things or places that move her, Veronica Mecchia's photographs encourage us to suspend time in gentle contemplation, leaving us with a light heart and the desire, like her, to poetically inhabit the world.
Presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, her photographs and artist's books can be found in private collections in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, Greece, the USA, Switzerland and Japan.
His artist's book "Fotografie" (Paris, May 2016) and two of his photographs are part of the "anti-Aufklärung 2019" collection and have been acquired by the Bibliothèque Kandinsky at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).
In June and September 2023, Remèdes galerie will devote a solo exhibition to him in Paris, entitled Wild Flowers.
