The CAMP Gallery is pleased to announce Emotional Exposure, featuring works by Italian sculptor and photographer Demis Martinelli. The online exhibition will run from March 15 through April 30, 2022, and be available for viewing on thecampgallery.com.
The intimacy of a photograph is not one to be mistaken, as they hold the memories and emotions of a single moment, lost to time passed. It contains both the sentimentality of family, partners, friends and of course the subject, and yet also the direct feelings of the one behind the lens. The pile of sentiments seeps out of the confines of the frame and moment captured within it, and adapt their own emotions and meaning tied to the new remembrance. In this process of recollection, Martinelli’s work not only become an extension of the expression of memories, but the combination of the fervor between photographer and subject, brewing expression unlimited by the form and factor.
In the CAMP’s newest online exhibition, Emotional Exposure, Demis Martinelli explores the connection drawn in the intimacy between him and the subject, and the emotions explored during the capture process. As he frames and shoots each image, Martinelli lays bare his desires and expression in the same way the subject bares their physical appearance as a vessel for a recessed carnal nature. Voyeurism becomes the confrontation that Martinelli challenges in the Polaroid depictions, each provocative image becoming a dialogue into the perceived view in the eye of the beholder. The perception of the voyeur transforms each piece into an assertion of the artists’ passion, being taken to engage in a moment of the intimate interaction between the nude and a desireful artist.
The emotions of the artist do not end with the shutter of the lens, as Martinelli has donned this series and many of his other works with “Emotional Engravings,” a self-prescribed technique of single-line drawing that evokes emotions felt into a wordless design. These lines breathe through and around the subjects themselves, embracing their own characteristic patterns akin to a language all of their own. In lieu of being able to properly convey the ardor in words, the raw emotions become patterns scrawled onto each piece in exact remembrance of the visceral feelings that transpired in the moment.
Though the passion presented by the artist dwells in each work, the subject remains the main focus of Martinelli’s photography, as the figures occupy the pseudo-liminal spaces of each environment. The eerily familiar locales create an unnervingly nostalgic remembrance for the viewer, as each statuesque nude provokes a set of emotions unique to the observer. Proving an antithesis to the common fear of baring one's body in public, the subjects embrace their spotlight that Martinelli comments “Unfortunately the society forced women to be ashamed of what they are, of what they want to be…”. The emotions expressed by the artist lie as the climax of not only a humanistic carnal desire, but the whole desires of expression in both subject and viewer in an unbound form.
Statement and curation by Gabe Torres
