Kirjahaku

Stefano Cerio (*1962) directs his attention to alternative worlds: for his elaborate series he takes pictures of recreational paradises—ski arenas, cruises, water and fun parks. For the artist, Italian street altars even count among these colorful illusory worlds that people create for the purpose of escaping from everyday life. Yet in his cool photographs Cerio without exception exposes the fun rides and the adventure pools in the off-season and therefore devoid of visitors; the ruptures, the bleakness, and the senselessness that become visible behind the amusing façades. For Chinese Fun, the photographer visited a whole range of recreational parks, water landscapes, and sports grounds in Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, and Hong Kong. His centrally organized compositions are made with a plate camera and document selected absurd arrangements—from a concrete fruit basket as large as a house to the looped tracks of an enormous roller coaster in the interior courtyard of an office complex. Exhibition: Fondazione VOLUME!, Rome 23.9.–3.11.2015

The ground is covered in snow, the horizon a dark line of mountains; low milky clouds hide the sky. In the foreground, a shapeless form, a strange sagging mass of bright colors—red, blue and yellow—stirs as it fills with air. In less than a minute a popular fairground attraction appears: an inflatable, rotund form, awkward and genial, shaped like a double slide or a springboard, the kind often seen in children’s play areas, at fairs and village gatherings. Along with other inflatables in the same vein—a chubby castle complete with dragon, a football pitch—the slide is part of the bizarre landscape conjured up in Stefano Cerio’s Aquila, a series of photographs taken in Abruzzo at different times of year and in highly impactful settings not far from L’ Aquila, on the plains of Campo Felice, Campo Imperatore and Pescasseroli.