2019 – ongoing
“captionthis” is a long-term project on the shifting relationship between Image and Word today. The title hints at the vernacular online jargon and forum tag “captionthis”, where weird and witty images are deemed untaggable or “beyond words”. The layered works use the problematic aesthetic of advertising and the appealing allure of glossy images on pictorial and installation materials, testing their limits of critique, provocation and seduction.
Through techniques of manipulation borrowed from the urban and online accelerated mediascape – as the proliferation of backlit devices, the repetition of graphic logos and recurring subject matters – the installations question the cultural and political assumed value of the images that stick to our psyche and shared worldview.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1, John). “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (Hamlet, Shakespeare).
In the time of ubiquitous photography and disappearing writing, mimetic and memetic representations, “captionthis” is a portrait of the conflicting hybridization of iconotexts today.
“captionthis” is a long-term project on the shifting relationship between Image and Word today. The title hints at the vernacular online jargon and forum tag “captionthis”, where weird and witty images are deemed untaggable or “beyond words”. The layered works use the problematic aesthetic of advertising and the appealing allure of glossy images on pictorial and installation materials, testing their limits of critique, provocation and seduction.
Through techniques of manipulation borrowed from the urban and online accelerated mediascape – as the proliferation of backlit devices, the repetition of graphic logos and recurring subject matters – the installations question the cultural and political assumed value of the images that stick to our psyche and shared worldview.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1, John). “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (Hamlet, Shakespeare).
In the time of ubiquitous photography and disappearing writing, mimetic and memetic representations, “captionthis” is a portrait of the conflicting hybridization of iconotexts today.
CAPTIONTHIS
“My interest in artist Luca Massaro does not lie in the intersection of photographs and words or in their different forms of production, translation, and transmission. These differences are quite straightforward. The interesting feature of his work lies in the aesthetic narration that emerges from what is actually absent in his photographs, that is, a story we cannot truly follow. This is not only evident in his most creative works, but also in those commissioned photographs he also produces. Anyone who visits his exhibition at Viasaterna now will remain impressed by the absences his installations provide as you walk through them. If we live in a world full of content, where nothing is truly understood given their excess, then we must look for absences. Luca provides these in such a form that touches your Being as Heidegger would say. The recent publication of “Dizionario Vol.1” by Art Paper Editions replaces words with images whose meaning requires an effort from the public. This effort consists in interpreting what is absent in the narration.” – Santiago Zabala
Every exhibition is an occasion of site-specific and material experimentation. The size of the works on canvases “Corps Typographiques” is a 1:1 scale based on the artist’s height,
this correspondence introducing a “Modulor” (scale of proportions based on
human measurements) and autobiographic characterization to the serial
display.