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The New Galleria Leòn In Bologna

Galleria Leòn, directed by Leonardo Iuffrida, opens in Bologna: a new point of reference for contemporary art and photography that opens with the double solo exhibition “Flemish Flair” by Camilla Di Bella Vecchi and Marco Gualdoni. The city of Bologna is ready to welcome the Galleria Leòn, directed by Leonardo Iuffrida: an innovative exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art. Located right in the center, the gallery stands out for offering a wide variety of genres and themes, paying particular attention to photography and artistic expressions that use the body as the main tool of communication. On Friday, December 6,2024 at 6: 30 pm, the Galleria Leòn will officially open its doors to the public, inviting art lovers, collectors, insiders and professionals in the sector to discover a unique artistic experience. The gallery is commercial in nature and is characterized by two souls: a section that includes a photographic archive composed of a careful selection of vernacular shots (found photographs by anonymous authors) from the nineteenth century to today, together with vintage photos of great American authors of male nudes and queer culture, including Bob Mizer (1922-1992) and Bruce of Los Angeles (1909-1974); and a second section dedicated to temporary exhibitions, with displays of works and emerging artists. On the occasion of the opening, the founder Leonardo Iuffrida presents the double solo show “Flemish Flair” by Camilla Di Bella Vecchi and Marco Gualdoni, two Italian photographers whose style recalls the atmospheres of Flemish artists. Flemish Flair offers the public the opportunity to immerse themselves in a distant time and space, in which the Nordic atmospheres of the great Flemish painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries echo, when a new light opened the gaze to horizons of hope and progress. Between portions of human bodies that emerge from nocturnal backgrounds, glittering objects and arcane and suspended visions, in the works of both photographers the light slides on the surface of people, objects and fabrics, offering an almost tactile rendering. It is a powerful light that opens the doors to an ideal, utopian and imaginative world, which only photography can make credible. Thanks to games of reflections, flashes and enigmatic combinations, the observer – with the mind and the gaze – has the power to shape a world made of beauty and mystery. Camilla Di Bella Vecchi focuses on the female figure and the grace of hand gestures. She creates her shots almost always through the use of her own body, recalling fragments, moments and scenes that are inspired by great masterpieces of art history. Marco Gualdoni focuses on the male figure and the construction of enigmatic dimensions. The male body, celebrated in compliance with the classicist vision of beauty, merges with floral and sculptural elements, being deconstructed until it becomes one with the architecture of objects. The exhibition will be open until February 15,2025.The public will also have the opportunity to admire a wide selection of vernacular photographs: portraits, travel and everyday life shots, taken by ordinary people. Photographs originally intended for personal or family use, often forgotten in albums, archives and private collections. Images that were not born as works of art but that, thanks to their beauty, deserve to be celebrated as authentic masterpieces. These shots also have a high historical-documentary value, transforming themselves into real portals to the past, through which it is possible to observe fashions, styles, habits and customs of distant and recent eras. The observer has the opportunity to give them new life through his own imagination, giving new essence to moments that would otherwise have been submerged in the oblivion of time. And the collector becomes the new custodian of that personal imagination of which the photo becomes a window. The exhibition context is completed by the photographs of the Masters Bob Mizer and Bruce of Los Angeles, two of the most important representatives of Physique Photography, a genre that established itself between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1960s, focusing on the exaltation of the muscularity of athletic male bodies. Bob Mizer is considered one of the pioneers of this art form for having explicitly combined nudity, physical activity and eroticism, and for having proposed his shots to a mass audience made up of men only, at a time when homosexuality was opposed and censorship was rampant. It is thanks to Physique Pictorial (1951-1990), considered one of the first gay magazines, that the male nude emerged from academies and restricted circles, to become an object not only to be studied and emulated, but also to be desired. His photographs with boys next door, endowed with an exuberant sensuality, have gained international recognition, passing in 2013 also through the prestigious halls of the Musée d'Orsay and the MOCA in Los Angeles”. Bruce of Los Angeles gave a glossy touch to the genre of Physique Photography, skillfully combining technical mastery.