Mark


GIAN PAOLO MINELLI

Works

Bio

Gian Paolo Minelli is a photographer with a profound interest in technique and social issues. This brings to the photo field an exceptional language that moves comfortably in these two worlds oftenly considered incompatible. His talent has made this possible: all his oeuvre point to his interest in contemporary reality and its marks in architecture in a natural, almost organic manner. Urban corners, parking lots, low-income housing, unfinished buildings: he uses great economy of means to transform seemingly uncomplicated takes and objects into deeply resonant carriers of meaning where both, aesthetic and political aspects merge. He often works in series of connected, yet autonomous works, in which a vivid dialogue is established between repetition and variation, between geometry and textures. His practice unfolds in public space and has incorporated human figures to his photos, engaging inhabitants from marginal areas of the metropolis. He has been working at Galpon Piedra Buena Arte in Villa Lugano, one of the poorest suburbs in Buenos Aires, where the combination of art and solidarity becomes explicit. From this work he has printed the book Piedra Buena-Zona Sur (2001-2006) and directed a film screened at several international Festivals.

Gian Paolo Minelli (b. 1968, Geneva, Switzerland) has taken his bright documental insight to numerous venues around the world. His photographs have been seen in more than 75 collective exhibitions all over the world and he has had exhibitions in many cities: Berne, Chiasso, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Miami, Lugano, Asuncion, Bellizona and Geneva. Some of the works featured at Dot Fiftyone Gallery have been recently shown at The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in the exhibition “Photography in Argentina (1850-2010): Contradiction and Continuity,” curated by Judith Keller and Idurre Alonso.