Casa de Costa gallery hosted a June 23 opening in New York City for a solo photography exhibition by artist Susanna Corniani. Corniani’s “The Great Business of Keeping Oneself Alive” marks the second exhibition at Casa de Costa’s new gallery and studio in Lower Manhattan.
“The Great Business of Keeping Oneself Alive” includes over 20 new prints featuring landscape photography, still life, and portraits. The themes of nature, sexuality, life, death, decay, and maternity are expressed in Corniani’s photographs. She has captured a full cycle of life and beyond—while also bringing a sense of femininity to her work.
“The photographs are more emotional than theoretical. It feels like an exquisite dream to me,” president Jason Costa of Casa de Costa gallery declares of the new exhibition.
While growing up in Italy, Corniani was classically trained in drawing and painting. She later moved to the United States and studied at the International Center of Photography. Her classical art background has influenced her current style and the subjects that she selects to photograph.
Corniani’s photographs come to us from places including Rome, the Mediterranean, New York, Ohio and many other destinations that she stumbles across. Corniani finds herself taking pictures all the time and views it as a habit that began at a young age. She would travel with her parents because she wanted to see places and would take pictures out of instinct. She still continues to travel and experience other cultures to challenge herself. Corniani currently splits her time between the United States and Europe.
To Corniani, photography is personal. It is more of a journey through place and time. She brings four or five cameras with her (including a Polaroid camera) and takes pictures based on what she is moved by. One photograph by Corniani featured at the gallery is of her deceased grandfather who is peacefully resting in a casket. The picture is not alarming or unpleasant; the texture of the image, the colors and the way that it was captured alludes to a feeling of life, death, peace and an understanding of the cycle. In consideration of these themes, Creative Director of Casa de Costa, Josh McNey claims, “Susanna’s photographs never look like a direct representation. The color is always untrue or the grain creates a false texture.”
Casa de Costa was founded under the premise of marketing fine art in New York in a way that differs from the traditional galleries and channels of distribution. The gallery creates alternative methods to show and experience art, including the salon-style setting of their new gallery. The exhibition features photographs with different sizes, frames and matting. “The pictures need to work in a house setting. Collectors need to feel comfortable and intimate because the pictures must work with the space,” says Jason Costa.
One room of the gallery consists of walls painted in a striking, yet unique, green color that seems fitting with Corniani’s photographs and works to accentuate the exhibition space. Casa de Costa gallery opens up onto a rooftop lounge that also adds a level of comfort and intimacy to the space. The location is an intriguing setting to view Corniani’s exhibition in an alternative, aesthetically intimate nature.
Susanna Corniani’s “The Great Business of Keeping Oneself Alive” is on view at Casa de Costa until July 28, 2011.
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All images courtesy of Nicolette Whitney.