The peculiarity of Erica Bardi's project consists in finding a dynamic balance between a more personal theme, which can be perceived thanks to the close-up, hyper-detailed images, and a more objective narrative linked to the behaviour of comets and documented, among others, with photographs taken from the NASA and ESA archives or taken by the author during the passage of comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). These celestial bodies are activated, becoming incandescent as they approach the Sun, and then extinguished, becoming rocks again as they move away from it. In this ambivalent behaviour of comets we find the oscillation between opposite poles readable in the images that depict with extreme abstraction objects caught in their intimacy and at the same time placed in the vastness of the universe. The installation in the Box, Chippendale Studio's new exhibition space, slowly unveils itself to the visitor, who can choose whether to linger on the threshold, observing it from the outside, or to enter, approaching the works on display and immersing himself in the light emanating from a sphere placed in the centre of the room. The variation of the light from the sphere mirrors the changes in the luminosity of a star throughout its life cycle: from a glowing red to a cold blue.

Even the perception of the photographic works hung in random order in the Box, therefore, changes according to how the light changes over the time during which the observer stays there, time also becoming a crucial element in the enjoyment of the entire exhibition complex. The chromatic changes of the sphere condense into a handful of seconds a phenomenon that is otherwise elusive to man, namely the evolution of a star from its birth to its extinction, which normally takes place over a time span of millions, if not billions of years. Again, a synthesis of opposite poles: derisory and sidereal distances, extremely short and incalculable times coexist harmoniously in Erica Bardi's work.

Press release by Chippendale Studio

Between us and the World

By Alessio Fusi

Erica Bardi belongs to that current of thought according to which photography possesses the faculty of being used in an intimate process of unveiling of the soul. Well then, the images contained in the project As Long as the Sun Lasts are structured following a convincing sensory bipolarity: on the one hand we have the practice experienced as an escape from a tormented everyday life; on the other we encounter an intangible dimension, made up of bewitching references to astronomy, which boasts a true redeeming power. The luminous trail that traces the creative profile of Erica Bardi is then composed of objet trouvé with a Duchampian flavour, scientific metaphors and archive images with the aim of restoring a powerful figurative marriage between technique and art, between image and life. These material experiments of his are intended to be, in fact, a direct testimony direct testimony to the concept of drama. Each shot, in addition to being distinguished by a precise aesthetic function, it enjoys full autonomy, it is a sentient organism able in rewriting the alphabet of suffering.

It is therefore a mechanism that has its factual roots not only in art but also in philosophy. In this regard, Simone De Beauvoir, referring to Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, in his essay entitled Per una morale dell'ambiguità (SE, 2001), brilliantly frames a poetic value of reception not dissimilar from that adopted by Bardi in her work: ‘ [...] in the letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse there is a constant passage from pain to its assumption'. [The lady] desires that through separation the other appears to her as other - in our case this outside self is represented by the turmoil produced by the photographer's heart. It is only insofar as it is foreign, inaccessible, free that the other reveals itself as other; and to love authentically is to love in its otherness the other, to love it in that freedom in which it subtracted'. To signify that in Erica Bardi's language the awareness of an such impetuous emotionality, hers, allows her to weave an edifying bond with human frailty. Within shots rich in autobiographical meanings but which, precisely because of their universal nature, connect to the collective memory, Bardi demonstrates how in our existence, and also in photography, nothing is ever actually as it seems.

Everything is in perpetual motion and for this reason can be shaped in function of a sensory rebirth.

Without the slightest hesitation, Erica Bardi succeeds in conveying the lessons of her sentimental pilgrimage, she presents herself in organic form becoming a comet who, while never photographing herself directly, appears and disappears in every image as a kind of spatial mirage.

Working with photography, asking photography to venture into unfamiliar territories: ‘beyond’ and ‘within’, as summarised in the title of the exhibition proposed by Casa Testori on the occasion of Milan Art Week. This is the trait that unites the research of Erica Bardi and Sofia Bersanelli, two artists who came out of the forge of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. For both of them it is a return to Casa Testori. Sofia Bersanelli had exhibited some photographs taken in 2016 on the occasion of the extraordinary arrival of the two sculptures by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the Cappella XXXII del Sacro Monte di Varallo, the one in the Salita al Pretorio: ‘Fotografare Gaudenzio’ was the title of the project directed by Angelo Barone. Erica Bardi, on the other hand, was among the protagonists of the exhibition recently curated by Marta Cereda, ‘La prima volta’, where the works of 19 artists under 30 were presented.
The title of the exhibition is intended to emphasise the tension that their works hold: a tension to go ‘beyond’ and ‘inside’ the image, to search for a more credible and deeper truth. The ‘inside’ may refer to the work of Sofia Bersanelli, in particular to the cycle entitled Se solo potessi cantare. Sofia opens her Polaroid shots as if to understand the process of image formation without taming it but letting herself be taken by the hand. The open shots become two valves and are then presented in the form of diptychs. 

One of the themes of Sofia's work is also time: a time that is ‘open’ as a process that never crystallises and is always in fieri, as suggested by the ‘long’ dates indicated in the captions of her works in the exhibition. The ‘beyond’, on the other hand, refers more immediately to the work of Erica Bardi who, with her project As Long as the Sun Lasts, investigates and explores infinite horizons, with short-circuits in the infinitely near. In fact, as you will discover in the exhibition, Erica's images propose interchangeable perspectives, operating explicit reversals that bring the sky down to earth, as in the image of the starry horizon that descends along the wall and settles on the floor. The tension to the ‘beyond’ leads Erica to experiment with extra formats with images printed on blue back paper, which is the paper of posters: the enlarged fingers of the hand try to grasp a small planet. Tender gesture, burning the distance between the near and the immensely distant. Sofia also projects herself on large formats, printing video frames on precious Hahnemuhle paper: they are dilated fragments as if to allow the eye to enter them. An ‘inside’ that therefore coincides with a ‘going beyond’. ‘Inside’ and “beyond” are complementary dynamics, generated by an equal tension to go beyond the threshold. Visually documenting these inner and at the same time visual journeys is the meaning of Sofia and Erica's work. It is a way of sharing their poetic and restless gaze with everyone.

Giuseppe Frangi