Marina Ballo Charmet. Au Bord De La Vue - Biographic Lines

The MA*GA Museum has always devoted particular attention to the development of contemporary photographic languages, promoting the most significant and independent research in the Italian Art scene. The retrospective exhibition devoted to Marina Ballo Charmet accompanying this publication is in line with this approach.
This exhibition thus investigates the main interests of this artist whose research method is characterised by a peculiar intertwining of linguistic, landscape, philosophical and psychoanalytical interests and who addresses topics such the everyday, the “always seen”, which the artist defines as the “background noise of our mind”.
According to Chevrier, “Marina Ballo Charmet rejects the anthropocentrism of an exact, supposedly objective vision. Looking no longer stands for keeping a distance, but is a form of participation, psychic as well as psychological. From project to project, images, be they still or moving, are place for an experimental, undefined intimacy”.
In this perspective, Marina Ballo Charmet’s research is unique in the Italian art scene. She shows a deep resilience towards any kind of alignment, imagining photography as a tool for self-education or re– education, above all, to vision itself. In fact, Marina speaks of the concept of photographing as a possibility of the gaze, “a power to see the world differently from before, perhaps to see it as if you were truly seeing it for the first time”.
Moreover, Marina Ballo Charmet’s research is also a complex one, thriving on history and stories. The History of Photography, History of Art and individual stories that, since childhood, the artist has interwoven with
the very rich biography of her father Guido Ballo, leading figure in the creation of the Premio Nazionale Arti Visive Città di Gallarate and hence of the museum itself. Therefore, when Marina quotes authors such as Lucio Fontana, Emilio Isgrò, Gianni Colombo or Rodolfo Aricò in her writing, she’s talking about her personal life but also, coincidently, of the history of Italian Art itself and the history of our museum. For this reason perhaps, this exhibition is all the things we have said so far, nevertheless among them, there is also a coming home.
This is exactly why, alongside Jean-François Chevrier (who had already curated an exhibition project this year at Bleu du Ciel Contemporary Photography Center in Lyon - March through May 2018), we have thought of including some artwork in dialogue with the museum collection:
in order to show both the clearest and most direct familiarity and understanding between Marina’s photographs and Italian Art history, as well as a more intimate one, which, as the subtitle reminds us, has to do with the artist’s biographical lines.