Giacomo Costa in 2010

‘Arena’
19.08. - 19.09.2010

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Born in Florence, Italy, Giacomo Costa has been showing work progressively all over the world. In 2009 he represented Italy at the Italian Pavilion at the prestigious Venice Biennale. In 2010 Costa shows for the first time in Australia with Dominik Mersch Gallery. In August he has a residency at the University of Sydney – Sydney College of the Arts, where he works and lectures.

Giacomo Costa’s research initially began with the study of photography before moving gradually in a direction that has lost all contact with traditional photography.

Employing sophisticated digital techniques borrowed from the world of cinema the artist reinterprets the collective imagination of the metropolis, creating unreal cityscapes, spaces with vast perspectives that include spectacular ruins and architectures.

Suspended between tradition and modernity, real and dreamlike, his “views” recall the sci-fi genre (are they perhaps the result of natural catastrophes? nuclear wars?) and at the same time, so rich in meticulous details, they seem to be the fruit of a contemporary reinterpretation of the most classic topos, that of the ideal city. His research covers fourteen years of activity, setting out from the first “urban agglomerates” right on down to the artist’s most extreme and crazy visions.