STRIP 2012 : Allan Balisi, Manuel Ocampo and Costantino Zicarelli

In STRIP 2012 curated by Rachel Rillo, Silverlens presents three painters as photographers: Manuel Ocampo and young contemporaries Allan Balisi and Costantino Zicarelli.

Allan Balisi shares a staged narrative through photography: a fragmented strip with two faceless and anonymous characters in various states of repose. Balisi, whose own paintings take photography as a starting point, sets these frozen figures amidst shadows, floral motifs, textures of fabric and floor, leaving the viewer to deduce whether these are scenes of a crime, a fatal accident, a practical joke, or a memory reframed.
 
Zicarelli, on the other hand, focuses his lens on random objects or moments, using photographs as documentary evidence of his previous works or of passing fancies. Printed on metallic photo paper, the images point to both the incidental and the biographical, combining the modern day memento mori with snapshots of Zicarelli's deliberately insolent works as a painter.

Manuel Ocampo presents the artist's studio as a site of negotiation between photography and painting. He shares images of paintings, unwrapped and propped on the studio's walls, as well as photographs of photographs of paintings, all displayed within this space. Through the symbolic dis/appearance of photography into painting using digital reproduction, Ocampo recasts the medium of photography as a a process for creating multiple interventions within works of art. / Text by Lisa Ito