Richard Wentworth

‘The origin of my photographs is "encounter", that is to say things which are met, not sought or hunted down.
 
They are not a project and there has never been any intention to work in an illustrative or expository way.  They are a chronicle, and reflect different episodes of my life in different places, at different times.

I am not knowledgeable about photography or architecture in a scholarly way, but I have always been interested in the materials of the world and how they are assembled. I have no formal training in anthropology or urbanism.

Very, very, very, very slowly it became clear that there is a kind of syntax and formal patterning to the things which I record. An early cull became known as  Making Do and Getting By, a kind of endless glossary of modest (and usually unrehearsed) leftovers of human interventions in bigger structures or wider circumstances. A subgroup became known as Occasional Geometries, essentially things which have ordered themselves in a formally compelling way.

As I see neither beginning nor end, nor indeed  "ownership", of this terrain, there are really lots of ways in which the material can be exhibited and expressed. MY own interest is to think of the images as bricks and always to order the presentation in such a way that the "mortar" (i.e. the intersticial spaces) becomes tantalising. A sort of pregnant experience for the viewer.’
 

Richard Wentworth (Samoa, 1947) lives and works in London. He studied at Hornsey College of Art, London, from 1965, and worked with Henry Moore as an assistant in 1967. He studied at the Royal College of Art, London between 1968 and 1970. He has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the end of the 70s. Between 1971 and 1987 Wentworth taught at Goldsmiths College and his influence can be seen in the work of the Young British Artists.
His work, encircling the notion of objects and their use as part of our day-to-day experiences, has altered the traditional definition of sculpture. By transforming and manipulating industrial and/or found objects into works of art, Wentworth subverts their original function and extends our understanding of them by breaking the conventional system of classification. These sculptural arrangements and assisted ready-mades play with the juxtaposition of objects that bear no relation to each other, as well as with a range of materials taken out of their original contexts.

Info
Chiesa dei SS. Agata e Carlo
Via San Carlo 1 - Reggio Emilia
Tel. 0522 451152, 0522 456249, 0522 456635, 0522 456448
Single ticket for all exhibitions 10€. Concessions 7€

Open Times:
Opening Friday 7th May, 19.00
7th May from 19.00 to 24.00; 8th - 9th May from 10.00 to 23.00
From 10th May to 13rd June: from Tuesdays to Fridays from 20.00 to 23.00; Saturdays, Sundays and festivals from 10.00 to 23.00. Monday closed. Open in the morning for schools.
 

Saturday 8th May 2010, 12.00 - Piazza Casotti

L’incanto degli occhi

Elio Grazioli presents Mark Borthwick, Alessandra Spranzi e Richard Wentworth.