C’è una sensazione di immutabilità, di vita eterna. In questi nuovi lavori si percepisce un legame di continuità con Cy e con la grandezza della sua eredità e della sua arte. Non è una commemorazione, è qualcosa di vivo.
—Sally Mann

Gagosian è lieta di presentare “Remembered Light: Cy Twombly in Lexington”, la prima mostra a Roma di Sally Mann.

Mann è particolarmente nota ed apprezzata per la sua rappresentazione fotografica di soggetti intimi e familiari in situazioni idilliache e sottilmente inquietanti: bambini, paesaggi, famiglie, e la fragilità della vita umana. Nella sua lunga carriera l’artista ha esplorato la relazione tra genitori e figli, mariti e mogli, fratelli e sorelle, natura e storia.

In queste fotografie a colori e in bianco e nero, scattate tra il 1999 e il 2012, Mann registra in fuggevoli immagini lo studio di Lexington, Virginia, appartenuto a Cy Twombly, suo caro amico e mentore. Il progetto, presentato di recente nelle gallerie Gagosian di New York e Parigi, assume una particolare risonanza in Italia, casa adottiva e affettiva del pittore per diversi decenni.

Quei panorami dove Twombly tornava ogni anno e che impregnano anche l’immaginario di Mann, accomunano i due artisti entrambi nati e cresciuti in Virginia.

Nella sua recente e acclamata biografia Hold Still, Mann ricorda la natura semplice di Cy, la sua gentilezza tipica del Sud, il suo spirito ironico e amichevole, scrivendo: “La nostra parte di Sud, lontana, bellissima e patinata di passato, ci permette uno straniamento di altri tempi”.

Sotto la luce soffusa della Virginia e lo sguardo di Mann, le accumulazioni e gli oggetti comuni nello studio di Twombly rivelano sè stessi non solo come testimonianza di un’esistenza colta e creativa, permeata da una forte esperienza tattile, ma anche come segno dell’esuberanza del suo modus operandi: nelle parole di Simon Schama “resti di cibo, sbaffi, macchie e un’assenza tramutata in presenza”.

L’opera Remembered Light, Untitled (Solitary Print on Wall) (2012) mostra una fotografia scattata da Twombly a Gaeta appesa alla parete dello studio. Nell’immagine di Twombly si scorge distintamente un busto classico disposto accanto ad alcuni vasi: plasmate dalla luce del litorale, queste forme emanano una quieta nostalgia. Remembered Light, Untitled (Squat White Sculpture and Paint Edges) (2012), rivela la componente materica delle sculture di Twombly. Nonostante l’assenza fisica dell’artista, Mann è in grado di evocare vividamente le tracce della quotidianità del suo lavoro.

Nelle immagini poetiche di Mann, frammenti e residui della vita artistica di Twombly evidenziano l’acuta abilità della fotografa nel registrare il proprio sguardo intimo e immediato su un presente che diventa memoria.

Correda il progetto un catalogo illustrato pubblicato da Abrams con un saggio di Simon Schama e una conversazione tra Sally Mann e Edmund de Waal.

Sally Mann è nata nel 1951 a Lexington in Virginia, dove vive e lavora. Borsista Guggenheim, l’artista ha ottenuto per tre volte il National Endowment for the Arts fellowship e nel 2001 è stata riconosciuta come “Miglior Fotografo Americano” dal Time Magazine. Mann ha ispirato due documentari: Blood Ties (1994) e What Remains (2007). Il suo libro più recente, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (Little, Brown, 2015), ha avuto un enorme successo di critica e figura tra i best seller della classifica del New York Times. La pubblicazione è stata inoltre selezionata per il National Book Award ed ha ricevuto la “Medaglia di Eccellenza Andrew Carnegie” per la Saggistica. Il lavoro di Mann è incluso nelle collezioni dei seguenti musei: Victoria and Albert Museum, Londra; Moderna Museet, Stoccolma; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; High Museum of Art, Atlanta e The National Museum of Modern Art di Tokyo. Tra le recenti mostre istituzionali si annoverano “Sally Mann: What Remains”, Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2004); “Sally Mann: Deep South/Battlefields”, Kunstammlung im Stadtmuseum, Jena, Germania (2007); “Sally Mann: The Family and the Land” Kulturhuset, Stoccolma (mostra itinerante 2007–2010: Taidemuseo Tennispalatsi, Helsinki; Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Svezia; The Royal Library, Copenaghen; Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Olanda; and The Photographer’s Gallery, Londra); “Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit”, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2010); “A Matter of Time”, Fotografiska Museet, Stoccolma (2012) e “Sally Mann: Battlefields”, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA.

Un’importante retrospettiva dal titolo “Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings” sarà presentata a Marzo 2018 alla National Gallery of Art di Washington e successivamente sarà itinerante in prestigiose istituzioni artistiche quali il Getty Museum di Los Angeles, il Museum of Fine Arts di Houston, la Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume a Parigi e il Peabody Essex Museum di Salem in Massachusetts.



There is a sense of immutable, eternal life. And in these new works there is a sense about Cy’s own continuum—the ongoing quality of his great legacy and his art—it’s not a memorialization, it’s a living thing.
—Sally Mann

Gagosian is pleased to present “Remembered Light: Cy Twombly in Lexington,” an exhibition by photographer Sally Mann. This is her first exhibition in Rome.

Mann is known and regarded for her images of intimate and familiar subjects rendered both sublime and disquieting: children, landscape, family, and the nature of mortality. In previous projects, she explored relationships between parent and child, husband and wife, brother and sister, nature and history.

In her latest exhibition of color and black-and-white photographs, taken between 1999 and 2012, she records in fleeting impressions the Lexington, Virginia studio of the late Cy Twombly, her close friend and mentor. Following presentations at Gagosian New York and Paris, this exhibition has special resonance in Italy, Twombly's adopted and imaginative home for several decades.

Twombly and Mann were both born and raised in Virginia. The landscape to which he returned each year is also the memoryscape of Mann’s connection to him. In her recent and celebrated memoir Hold Still, she recalls his elemental nature, his Southern courtesy, his wry and gentle humor. Recalling their friendship she writes, “Our part of the South, remote, beautiful, and patinaed with the past, allows us such a remove, the distance of another time.”

Under Mann’s gaze, and the suffused light of Virginia, the accumulations and ordinary objects in Twombly’s studio reveal themselves not only as evidence of a richly imaginative and cultivated life lived and marked by tactility, but also as the overflow of his general modus operandi—in Simon Schama's words, “the leftovers, smears, and stains, and an absence turned into a presence.” Remembered Light, Untitled (Solitary Print on Wall) (2012) shows a wall of the Virginia studio, and, stapled to it, a photograph taken by Twombly in Gaeta. In Twombly's image, as captured by Mann, there is a just discernible view of a classical bust arranged with several vases; silhouetted by the coastal light, these shapes exude a quiet sense of nostalgia. And with Remembered Light, Untitled (Squat White Sculpture and Paint Edges) (2012), Mann indicates the tactile processes leading to the creation of one of his sculptures. Even without the artist's actual presence, she is able to vividly evoke the traces of his daily life and work.

Mann’s poetic images of time recorded capture fragments and deposits of Twombly’s artistic life. As well, they speak to her deft, sharp ability to record interiority and her singular eye for the immediate, the intimate, and the present becoming memory.

A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Simon Schama, and a conversation between Sally Mann and Edmund de Waal, published by Abrams, accompanies the exhibition.

Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, where she continues to live and work. A Guggenheim fellow, and a three-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Mann was named “America’s Best Photographer” by Time magazine in 2001. She has been the subject of two documentaries: Blood Ties (1994), and What Remains (2007). Her most recent book, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (Little, Brown, 2015), has been met with critical acclaim and is a New York Times best seller, along with being shortlisted for the National Book Award and recipient of the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence for Nonfiction. Collections include the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. Recent institutional exhibitions include “Sally Mann: What Remains,” Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2004); “Sally Mann: Deep South/Battlefields,” Kunstammlung im Stadtmuseum, Jena, Germany (2007); “Sally Mann: The Family and the Land,” Kulturhuset, Stockholm (2007, traveled to Taidemuseo Tennispalatsi, Helsinki; Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden; The Royal Library, Copenhagen; Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Holland; and The Photographer’s Gallery, London, through 2010); “Sally Mann: The Flesh and the Spirit,” Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA (2010); “A Matter of Time,” Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm (2012); and “Sally Mann: Battlefields,” Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA.

“Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings,” a major retrospective of Mann’s work, will premiere in March 2018 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and will travel to major institutions including the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.