On the occasion of the Milan Expo 2015, the Italian Institute of Culture sponsored the show, “Exploring Milan,” in collaboration with the Today Art Museum. The exhibit offers a photo journey through Milan and its surroundings. The photographer, Roberto Goffi, believes that a web of stratified mazes makes up any big city and its hinterland. To unravel their intricacies and narrate their stories, he tracks and follows certain keys for interpretation.

The exhibition presents four different groups of images: Milan the Ephemeral, Milan the Laborious, Milan the Secretive, and Milan’s ancient roots. The contemporary spirit of the exhibit, programmatically ephemeral, is portrayed through cold images printed on industrial paper and put on aluminum plates. The images show layers of the past, though others are sometimes recent but always long-lasting. These works are printed on sensitized water color paper, to accentuate the poetic aspect in them. Some also contain traces of pencil drawings and hand-coloring.

Milan the Laborious looks at factories and waterways, at old buildings and modern re-inventions of structures that wrote the destiny of Milan as a hub of production and an economic capital of Europe. Goffi penetrates an array of discreet and secluded places, reflecting the personality of the denizens of Milan, their concreteness, their reluctance towards ostentation, and their tendency to hide shy treasures. He believes that the deepest investigation discloses the ancient origins, read as shreds of visual poetry, the growing soil and the origin of everything.

About the exhibition

Dates: February 5 Through February 29, 2016

Venue: F10, Redtory Art and Design Factory

Courtesy of the artist and Pu Gallery.