Rachele Maistrello. Beyond Reasonable Evidence

Rachele Maistrello’s photographs unite past and present. By placing a contemporary viewer in front of an antique canvas she offers the audience the opportunity to question the evidence of reality. The striking resemblance challenges the distance in time between the two portraits in the eye of the beholder. 

This resemblance also challenges the apparent evidence of reality in photography juxtaposed to painting: the painted person could be defined as a fictional image because the so-called ‘real’ person is contrasted with the painted background. Reality and depiction are represented together in the same photograph and so are defined by each other. The dual representation of the two -painting and photography - expose not only similarities but also incongruities. The photograph reveals small details that are recognizable signs of contemporaneity, like the zipper of a jacket or some very outlined facial features, but in comparison with the painted person, these details ironically become flaws that are testimony to reality.

Nonetheless, the definitions of reality and fiction, created because of being each others opponents, are decomposed the moment the spectator is not simply looking at the photograph, but includes her or himself as a third person. Because, is the photographed ‘real’ person in the photograph not only another depicted, portrayed bust? Then the only real person left, becomes the one who is observing the photograph. This double spectatorship is established when the gaze of the spectator standing in front of the photograph crosses the gaze of the turned-around museum visitor. 
A special connection is established in that moment, a connection that allows the spectator to travel trough time. This connection is established with the photographed person once their gazes meet. The spectator and the photographed museum visitor are contemporaries, but the resemblance with the painted person enables this connection to proceed straight to the painted figure, and breaks the boundary of time between the three of them - all united in the same moment. 
In this play of changing relationships with the moment of reality the characters have, Rachele Maistrello tells the story of an existing unbound from time. It starts with the idea that these three present bodies represent different moments in time, coming in different disguises - painted, photographed and real - but in the end they exist together in the moment the visitor of this exhibition sees the other visitor of the old Master’s exhibition and the definition of reality is changed. 
Hereby the moment when the photograph was taken is obliterated by the content of the image and the spectator that finds it. The fleeting moment captured in the photograph had to be waited for, perhaps just as long as it took in the past to finish an oil painting.
 

Rachele Maistrello
(1986, VittorioVeneto, Italy)
Lives and works in Venice

Educated at IUAV in Venice, ENSBA Paris (atelier Messager) and ZHDK Zurich. In 2013 she was granted a one year artist-residency in Venice at the contemporary art Foundation Bevilacqua La Masa.Her work has been shown at BYOB, 54.Biennal of Venice, Italy (2011); the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Milan, Italy (2012); Galerie 201, Zürich, Switzerland (2012); the ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Germany (2009); IMMIX gallery, Paris, France (2008).
Inez Pizo 
(1988, Brunssum, The Netherlands)
Lives and works in Madrid

Currently works at the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo de Madrid. She curated the shows: Orgullo/Verguenza: la Identidad Española (Madrid), Fünzig Verfassungen (Berlin) and The Travelling Artwork together with Stephanie Noach (Amsterdam). She gives workshops like ‘Future Memories’ (Kassel and Madrid). She holds a M.A. in History from the Autonomous University in Madrid in collaboration with the Reina Sofia Museum.

Stephanie Noach 
(1986, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Lives and works in Havana and Amsterdam

Currently is a curator at the 12th Havana Biennale with her show ‘Sin oficio, ni beneficio’. Her most recent curatorial projects include: I would prefer not to (Amsterdam), We’ve got time (Schloss Ringenberg, Germany). She participated in conferences on the subject of work at the Printemps del Laboratoires (Paris).
She holds an M.A. in History of Art (with honors) from the University of Amsterdam and Latin American Studies with a Concentration in Museum Studies from New York University.

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