The concept
Corpo Sociale is a project born within the event #givemeacircle held on October 12, 2018 in the charming Venetian location of the former Church of Santa Chiara in Murano, Venice. During the event, Corpo Sociale gave life to a performative action where all the guests had the opportunity to take part in, showing their own body to the camera of artist Fratelli Calgaro. By representing the anatomical aspects of the male and female human bodies, Corpo Sociale act as a metaphor for the typical complexity of a corporate structure and its ramifications, whose overall value is given by the strength of human relationships. The project, conceived by Vulcano and curated by Daniele Capra, takes its final shape in a book now available in our online shop.
Since antiquity, the image of the body – in the articulated complexity of its functions – has been used as a device by philosophers, politicians, and intellectuals for describing society, the members that make it up, its dynamics, and the functional, hierarchical, and strong relationships between its parts. By its very nature, the body is a metaphor for the union between single elements, apparently destined for different aims, that finds a higher meaning in the articulation and development of a relationship: starting from these relationships, it is a symbol of how individuals structure themselves into groups, into complex organisms and networks. In this vision, the different functions entrusted to each single part of the body are often relevant, but the most significant result, however, is the organic unity of the whole body. Briefly, we could say that the overall value of the whole body is superior to the algebraic sum of its individual functions, because there is a value – difficult to measure – that derives from its complex structure, from the possibilities of undertaking tasks a degree higher, only possible thanks to the superimposition of many processes. So the body in itself is far superior to being a totality of functions that are undertaken in a mechanical way, because it is a society, in other words an organism that answers to the most complex requests of man who is by his very nature, as Aristotle observed, a “political animal”.
Daniele Capra
Curator
Taken individually, Fratelli Calgaro’s shots recount their own story, one consisting not only of eyes, hands, knees, tendons, and hair, but also of clothes and indispensable ornaments, removed hair and unruly bristles, scars and tattoos, love grips and toned muscles, stretch marks and natural imperfections. The sum of all these stories, endlessly juxtaposed by the artist and respectful of individual identities, forms an overall portrait, a new story in which all the stories that it consists of are extremely different yet of equal importance.
Nico Covre
Creative director, Vulcano
The Book
Edition of 989 copies + 10 numbered limited edition copies with a print signed by the author.
SOLD OUT
Bio
Fratelli Calgaro is the pseudonym with which Beppe Calgaro has signed his art work since 2003. He graduated in philosophy at Venice University with a thesis on the aesthetics of Walter Benjamin.
At the heart of the videos and photographs of Fratelli Calgaro is a research that, starting from the reality of the places or persons portrayed, pushes photography towards a visual oxymoron. Fratelli Calgaro develops and signs projects that are uninfluenced by the wishes of clients and that attempt to represent the aesthetic contradictions of reality.
His works have been exhibited in Italian museums and galleries. As an advertising photographer, Beppe Calgaro has worked for lifestyle magazines and fashion firms.
www.beppecalgaro.com
