BIOGRAPHY

Gianni Melotti (1953), Florence, Italy.

He studied art and photography in Florence.

From 1974 he worked as a professional photographer at art/tapes/22, Maria Gloria Bicocchi’s video-art production house in Florence.  Here he documented the video research of numerous international artists including: Giuseppe Chiari, Bill Viola, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Douglas Davis, Alvin Lucier, Urs Lüthi, Gérald Minkoff, Jean Otth, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Giulio Paolini, Arnulf Rainer, Sandro Chia, Takahiko Iimura and Terry Fox.  The original backstage photographic material and still frames of art/tapes/22 are preserved in his archive and consist of over 2000 photos.

During the same period he photographed the activities of the Zona non profit art space in Florence where, on several occasions, he began to present his own artistic research. 

From 1975, together with his activities of photographic documentation linked to performance and avant-garde theatre, he concentrated his attention on the relationship between photography, the dark room development process and art, taking part in international exhibitions and numerous publications.

In 1985 he began to realize the series of silicon sculptures which had the appearance of square paintings in a frame called Pelli/Pellicole in transparent polymer and, subsequently, the monochrome series Pigmenti which included pure natural pigment.

From the early Nineties he produced works in different types of clay or in stone, in which the subject was a faithful three-dimensional representation, in the same scale, of the new digital technological instruments that have invaded our daily lives.

The subject of his research has always been the representation of the image.  He constantly uses photography or other instruments of reproduction to make recordings in order to subsequently hand the subject back in the form of different meanings.  His work is a reflection on images as they manifest themselves, as they are perceived, as they are discussed and remembered.  In reality there are no differences in technique (between the photographed object and the sculpture) just the context in which that given visual, imaginative, procedural experience takes place.

In recent years, with the production of numerous series of photographic works, he has continued his dialogue, examining in greater depth the relationship between the attention of the act of looking and the expansion of the instant.  

In 2011 he took part in the “Video Medium Intermedium” exhibition in Venice, curated by Bice Curiger, where his photographs of art/tapes/22 owned by the Venice Biennale’s Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee (ASAC)-Historic Archive of Contemporary Arts were displayed. 

In 2013 he took part in the “Parole, parole, parole…” exhibition at the Museo Pecci in Milan.

Since 2014 some of his photographs have been part of the permanent collection at the Museo Novecento in Florence.

In 2017 over a hundred photos related to the years at art/tapes/22 went on display in Palazzo Strozzi of Florence as part of the “Bill Viola. Electronic Renaissance” exhibition. The same year saw the pubblications of the book art/tapes/22 video tape production (Giunti Editore) and the art edition WETZLAiR (Air of Wetzlar) in three hundred copies numbered for the homonym exhibition in Florence Leica Store.

In 2018 he shows the solo exhibition “Lavori in corso” at the Studio Dabbeni in Lugano (CH), the work Piano Bar (1977) at the MIART in Milan and the participation with a specific project at the exhibition "Mental Landscapes / Natural Trajectories", curated by Lorenzo Bruni, collateral event of Manifesta 12, at the G.G. Gemmellaro Geological Museum in Palermo.

In 2019 the pubblications of the art edition La storia segreta delle 32 immagini di finta guerra (89books) and the book Photography is easy. Giuseppe Chiari in the photographs from the Seventies, english version (Giunti Editore).

In 2020 he took part in the “Giuseppe Chiari. Suono, Parola, Azione”, curated by Stefano Verri, at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi – Palazzo Bisaccioni, Jesi, with two artworks related to the relationship with Giuseppe Chiari. In the same year the Fondazione Ragghianti presents two contemporary exhibitions “L’avventura dell’arte nuova. Anni 60-80. Cioni Carpi e Gianni Melotti”, curated by Angela Madesani e Paolo Emilio Antognoli, which intend to investigate the great ferment in the Italian art of the sixities, seventies and eighties.

In 2020 the book Photography is easy – Giuseppe Chiari in the photographs from the Seventies (Giunti Editore) wins the first prize in the Monographs category of the European Book Prize (FEP - Federation of European Professional Photographers).

In 2024, the Art Archive Center of the MAXXI Museum in Rome acquired all the photographic documentation material he has created since the early 1970s. Called the Gianni Melotti Documentary Photographic Fund, it contains an important testimony of the work of many international artists, including portraits, videos, performances and experimental and avant-garde theater.