23 June - 15 September / text by Cristiano Seganfreddo
Illustration of Diane Pernet by Dodi and Pablo ©
Diane Pernet, Shadows of an Icon
"They are fragments. Scattered and imprecise. Not catalogued. They escape from the omnipotence of the past which absorbs everything it meets and forgets it without a regret. Or acclaim. What is left to us is the shadow of life which, perhaps, one day will meet up with us and tell us what we were and no longer are. And so a light arises from memory: the wrinkles of a face, the smell of a corridor, the color of the wind, the moment of a loving look. And, as soon as mentioned, everything is shattered. As soon as it is exposed to the air. Photography photographs but rarely reveals what the image does not have. Diane Pernet reveals life. Which she has experienced. In all its complexity and intensity. And its shadows. That area unexposed to the sun, not public, far from the limelight.Fashion is always on the catwalk.
It is direct. Immediate. With makeup and wigs. Always efficient and commercial. Diane, instead, is delicate and poetic. Forced to wear dark glasses with large butterfly-frames so as not to be blinded by the many things that are continuously banal or vulgar, in a moral sense rather than an esthetic one. And in her wandering from latitude to longitude, her following the meridians, she brings and re-brings tiny, esthetic or un-esthetic, seemingly insignificant details of life. Trimmings of diversity.
A potpourri of intelligence. Of sensibility. Unlabelled, not distributed by the luxury firms or by mass taste. And this is where contemporary life is born."
Via s.Spirito 17, Milan
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