Luca Massaro
Captionthis

Exhibition Details

Appropriating the glossy charm of the advertising aesthetic, Massaro reflects on the changing relationship between photography and text in a contemporary context in which communication is increasingly based on the power of the image.

In online slang “captionthis” means an out-of-the-ordinary image. Difficult to label. To give it a single caption would be reductive: it goes 'beyond words' and is often an opportunity to invite others to make sense of what they see. What cultural value do images hold for our psyche? How can an image change the meaning of a word, and how can a word change the meaning of an image? Photography is omnipresent, writing tends to disappear, and it is difficult to draw a line between the two dimensions: Captionthis investigates their hybridisation, in a space that is as much urban as it is close to the online world.

Between the nostalgia and humor, Massaro's visual imagery recalls the manipulation techniques that are typical of fashion and invites us to reflect on the contemporary use of icon-texts, whose power can be accentuated by new tools such as Artificial Intelligence softwares.