Homage to Photographic Masters.
From 31 October 2020 to 16 May 2021, the Magazzino delle Idee in Trieste presents the exhibition Sandro Miller Malkovich Malkovich! Homage to Photographic Masters.
The exhibition, curated by Anne Morin and Simona Cossu, is organised by the Regional Authority for Cultural Heritage, Erpac in collaboration with diChroma photography, La Chrome in Madrid, with the courtesy of the FIFTY ONE Gallery in Antwerp.
The exhibition
Sixty-one colour and black and white portraits by American photographer Sandro Miller, inspired by the masters of photography and interpreted by John Malkovich.
Malkovich puts his extraordinary mimicry talent at the service of a skilled photographer and some of the most famous images and authors in the history of art and photography chosen by Sandro Miller for the role they have played in inspiring his work: from Richard Avedon to Diane Arbus, from Irving Penn to Yousuf Karsh, from Dorothea Lange to Andy Warhol.
Malkovich and Miller’s friendship dates back to late 1990, when they both collaborated on a project for the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago. In 2013, Miller proposed to Malkovich to interpret some images by the masters of portrait photography. Miller and Malkovich only started shooting after a year of preparation, assisted by a crew of costume designers, make-up artists, set designers and lighting directors.
The success of the project is due above all to the extraordinary work of identification performed by Malkovich who, together with Miller, revisits subjects and authors, very different styles and languages: he thus becomes Albert Einstein showing his tongue to Arthur Sasse (1951), Che Guevara portrayed by Alberto Korda (1960) and the master of thrills Alfred Hitchcock portrayed with irony by Albert Watson, but also Jack Nicholson made up as the Joker for Herb Ritts (1988). We move from Robert Mapplethorpe’s Self Portrait to Andrés Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987), from Andy Warhol’s pop art to a deliberately frivolous image of Pierre et Gilles (1990) designed for a Jean Paul Gaultier advertising campaign, to the sorrowful face of the migrant mother, Migrant Mother (1936) by Dorothea Lange. A project capable of scrutinising Irving Penn with Pablo Picasso (1957), Yousuf Karsh with Ernest Hemingway (1957), Diane Arbus with the most frightening twins (1967) in our imagination.
The exhibition concludes with the unreleased Malkolynch section, which consists of the video Psychogenic Fugue (2015), a short film resulting from a collaboration between Sandro Miller and David Lynch and described by Miller as ‘a rollercoaster through the mind of David Lynch’, and some photographs. In the video and photographic images, eight of Lynch’s best-known characters are reinterpreted by John Malkovich, including Frank Booth, Mystery Man, the protagonist of The Elephant Man, John Nance’s character Henry Spencer from the film Eraserhead, Agent Dale Cooper and Mrs. Stump, from The Secret of Twin Peaks. For the grand finale, Malkovich plays Lynch himself.
Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by the volume Malkovich, Malkovich. Homage to Photographic Masters published by Skira Milan on the occasion of the exhibition, which was never shown in Italy before.
Born in 1958 in Illinois, Sandro Miller took up photography as a self-taught teenager after seeing Irving Penn’s portraits.
With numerous award-winning promotional campaigns behind him, Sandro is one of the most respected fine-art and advertising photographers. He has photographed several advertising campaigns, notably brands such as Malboro, Philip Morris, Coca Cola, Esquire and campaigns for Times Magazine and Harpers’ Bazaar.
At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, in July 2011, he received the Saatchi & Saatchi award as best first-time director. In 2014, at Carniage Hall in New York, he received the award for Best International Photographer of the Year for his achievements in photography.
The following year he was awarded Best International Photographer of the Year by the Lucie Foundation’s for the photographs in the project Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to the Photographic Masters. For the past five years, he has been voted among the world’s top 200 advertising photographers in competitions with industry juries.
Born in 1953 in Christopher, Illinois Malkovich is an American actor, producer and designer.
In 1976, Malkovich became a founding member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.
He moved to New York in 1980 where he debuted in a play based on Sam Shepard’s play True West, winning an Obie Award. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance in Robert Benton’s Seasons of the Heart (1984) and Wolfang Peterson’s In the Crosshairs (1993).
He acted in more than seventy films, including Roland Joffé’s Screams of Silence (1984), Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987), Stephen Friears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Gary Sinise’s Of Mice and Men (1992), Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich (1999), Liliana Cavani’s The Talented Mr Ripley (2002), Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (2008), The Coen Brothers‘ Spy-Proof (2008), Gabriele Salvatores’ Siberian Education (2013). He stars in Paolo Sorrentino’s television series The New Pope (2020).
In 2002, Malkovich created his own brand, Mr. Mudd, for which he is a designer.
Born in 1946 in Montana, David Lynch is an American filmmaker, painter, musician, actor and photographer.
He is best known for the films The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), considered by some critics to be among the best films of their respective decades, and for the successful television series The Secrets of Twin Peaks (1990-91), thanks to which he was described as ‘the first popular surrealist’ by noted film critic Pauline Kael.
His 1977 debut film Eraserhead-The Erasing Mind is considered a cult film.
Winner of a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019, he received three Oscar nominations for Best Director and won the French César Award for Best Foreign Language Film twice, as well as the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival.
Opening hours
Daily 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays by appointment by writing to info@magazzinodelleidee.it or calling 040/3774783.
Tickets
Full 8,00€
Reduced 6,00€
– 65 years and over
– children from 11 to 18 years of age
– students up to 26 years of age; disabled persons
*Document required
Groups and children € 3,00 (children from 6 to 11 years of age)
free of charge
– children up to 6 years of age
– accompanying persons of groups (1 per group)
– visiting teachers with pupils/students (2 per group)
– one accompanying person per disabled person
– Icom membership card, journalists with a regular membership card of the National Association of Journalists (professionals, trainees, publicists) on duty by requesting accreditation at: info@magazzinodelleidee.it
Information
In compliance with anti-Covid19 regulations, admission to the exhibition will be limited to a maximum of 50 people at a time. Reservations required.
E-mail: info@magazzinodelleidee.it Tel: +39 0403774783
The ticket office closes half an hour before
Press office
Studio Battage, Milano: +39 02 38261753
Margherita Baleni: margherita.baleni@battage.net – +39 347 4452374
Alessandra de Antonellis: alessandra.deantonellis@ddlstudio.net – +39 339 3637388
