monica carocci

La scelta del tempo

curated by paola ugolini

from march 14th 2024

Francesca Antonini Arte Contemporanea is pleased to present La scelta del tempo, third solo exhibition by Monica Carocci (Rome, 1966) at the gallery.

The project presents a careful selection of photographs characterized by a common denominator: the female figure. Balancing women, floating dresses and women in insect costumes are the starting point of a narrative out of time, never immortalized in a perpetual staticity but on the contrary symbols of a suspended dimension.

Monica Carocci, since the beginning of her career, has distinguished herself by a highly personal use of the photographic medium, managing to create a rarefied and suspended atmosphere surrounding each of her subjects. Her approach has made possible a path of extreme coherence and recognizability, in which the technique becomes a distinctive feature: a long process that originates from the shot (strictly in black and white, with rare exceptions) to continue with various interventions in the darkroom during the development and printing phases, until the starting image is completely altered through acids, additions, abrasions, erasures, enlargements. The succession of these processes, together with her gaze, allow the artist to treat photography in a way that can be likened to painting.

Monica Carocci's images, without the mediation of the digital, manifest themselves directly on the baryta paper, often irregularly cut and with the margins left raw, in which sometimes mistakes and randomness play a crucial role in generating unexpected results.