Sense and Sentiment
Drawing influence from the history of non-representational photography, and recent practices by the artist in this field of production, this series serves as an active rejection of sensibility and sentimentality. Using steel, a material foundational to the social and economic structure of the artist's hometown Hamilton, Giacchetti creates images that are fundamentally reductive in both form and meaning; offering up the representational history of photography in exchange for a photograph that essentially refers to and depicts nothing but itself. After sensitizing plates using a silver-gelatin emulsion, the plates are then exposed to ambient light in Giacchetti’s hometown. Although definitive in intention and execution, this work embraces objectivity in its purest form, reducing an image of the artist’s history to a flat black plane.
This exhibition is presented in partnership with OCAD University.
Interview with Antonio Giacchetti by Kesa Smith:
Antonio Giacchetti is a writer and visual artist practicing in Southern Ontario, and has recently completed a BFA in Photography at OCAD University. His practice includes a variety of experimental image making methods, conceptual and studio based photography as well as short performative and experimental films. Recent works have explored visual articulations of existential philosophy, deconstructions of the photographic image, mark-making, and notions of home, memory and formative experiences from the context of the male form. His work has been exhibited at various locations in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario as well as internationally in Tampere, Finland and Berlin, Germany.
