Rocco Venezia is an Italian visual artist working with photography. His first monograph named Nekyia has been published in 2017 by Witty Books and is now part of the collection of The National Art Library at V&A Museum. In 2018, Rocco has been selected as one of the 2nd Cycle emerging artists from Parallel Europen Photo Platform. Next to his personal projects, he works as curator and producer for PHmuseum and he is founder and director of Photo Meliggoi Residency program in Greece.
About ‘ Is Life Under The Sun Not Just a Dream’ – words by Rocco Venezia:
When the child was a child,
It was time for these questions:
“Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?”
Peter Handke
To me, it seems to exist an exact time during the day when things are revealed under the warmest sun, bringing out their own mute truth. Wondering at the margins of Southern Europe realities, where the ephemeral daily life’s remains becoming temporary sculptures, like slags of classicism in disruption that acquire a life of their own, I wish to punctuate this search of the ordinary.
As the child, the protagonist in Peter Handke poem’s excerpt, I started doubting my own perception and while craving for those metaphysical facades I felt that it is only by stopping time that it is possible to perceive its inexorable passage. Like in a De Chirico’s painting, I believe that in the eternal flow, every object, every surface and every fracture are silent witnesses questioning us with a unique enigma to solve.
By experiencing the idea of Southern Europeans in countries like Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, I want my work to investigate their contemporary surfaces and tracing a comprehensive mental representation of their dreamlike reality.
This work has started in the scope of the 2nd Cycle of Parallel Europen Photo Platform.
