The Centro Internazionale di Fotografia in Palermo, directed by Letizia Battaglia, presents two exhibitions for autumn 2019, shown simultaneously in its spaces: You Can’t Have All the Colors in the World, a solo exhibition by the multifaceted Roman artist Corrado Sassi, and Visionari, a group exhibition featuring photographers Mario Cusimano, Claudio Laureti, Eleonora Orlando, Rori Palazzo, and Nerira Toci. Both exhibitions open on Wednesday, September 25 at 6:30 pm and run through November 3. You Can’t Have All the Colors in the World presents an engaging selection of works drawn from two different projects by Corrado Sassi, tracing two decades of his artistic activity.
Painter, sculptor, performer, filmmaker, photographer, and actor, there is virtually no field within the vast world of art that Corrado Sassi (Rome, 1965) has not explored. His artistic research ranges from photography to performance, from video installations to cinematic language, which allows him to return to the origins of his training, culminating in a degree in photojournalism from the prestigious International Center of Photography in New York. For this occasion, Sassi selected images from the Snap series, a project begun in 1999 that reflects the artist’s personal approach to street photography, rooted in his deep admiration for great photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Brassaï, William Eggleston, Luigi Ghirri, Mario Giacomelli, Letizia Battaglia, and Josef Koudelka. “These great photographers were able to create a kind of inner reportage that could be shared with the public. By always carrying my camera with me, I am able to immediately capture a certain image in a given moment in which I recognize myself; the shot records this alchemy, creating a kind of mutual validation between the image and my existence,” explains Sassi.
The other works are part of the project Artviewers – Reflections, through which the photographer has been documenting the national and international contemporary art scene for over ten years by photographing the audience at art fairs. What would art be without an audience? This is the question the artist poses, drawing inspiration from an idea attributed to Picasso. With Artviewers – Reflections, the photographer portrays visitors to galleries and, above all, to art fairs—those quintessential commercial contexts of the contemporary art world where the artwork not infrequently loses its “Aura.” In Sassi’s photographs, it is the audience that is elevated to the status of artwork, in a subtle exchange of roles.