On Saturday 26 November 2016 at 6 pm, Studio Cenacchi opens at Via Santo Stefano 63 in Bologna as a new space for contemporary art, with Elena Franco’s photographic exhibition Cauti racconti immaginari.

The starting point for the project is the historic residence near Lake Orta that Franco chose as her home. Her photographs explore the building through the stories it holds, bringing its past into dialogue with the present.

Part documentary and part fiction, the project moves between history and theatre and is conceived as a collection of short stories. The Bologna exhibition presents its first two chapters, one of them previously unseen. Franco approaches the house as a place where architecture, physical traces and memories of former residents have accumulated over time. Small details become clues from which its history can be pieced together.

Her research also brings forgotten voices back into view. One is the painter Francesco Toni d’Auzate (1826–1894), who decorated the house and probably lived there. Others are the anonymous amateur photographers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who photographed the building and its residents. Their images become part of Franco’s own investigation, informing her work both as an architect and as a photographer.

For the first chapter, family photographs discovered in the attic are placed alongside Franco’s own images. These seem to belong to an uncertain time, deliberately recalling photographs from the first half of the twentieth century. First presented at Milan Image Fair in 2014 and subsequently at several photography festivals, the series is shown here in an installation designed to evoke the atmosphere of the house. Period frames and a selection of objects from the building help recreate the setting from which the work emerged.

The second chapter follows Franco’s search for the family painter, a figure long since forgotten. The investigation has something of a cold case about it. Franco traces his story through archives, public and private collections, churches and other places where his works survive, from the Novara area to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. This part of the project is presented as an artist’s book produced in an edition of just three copies.

These are short stories told through images: imagined, yet possible. Written in the present, they continually look back towards the past, offering tentative answers to a question that runs throughout the project: what might really have happened here?

Elena Franco
Cauti racconti immaginari
Serie 1 e 2
Curated by Guido Piacentini
with a text by Gigliola Foschi

26 November 2016 > 11 February 2017
The exhibition, enriched by an unpublished chapter dedicated to Palazzo Ghiselli Vasselli — home of Studio Cenacchi — was extended until 11 February to allow visitors to experience the renewed installation

GALLERIA STUDIO CENACCHI
Via Santo Stefano 63
40125 Bologna

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday–Saturday: 4:30–7:30 pm
Monday: by appointment
Sunday: closed