Praise of the free spirit, unconscious, undisguised beauty. The name of the exhibition taking place in Milan has been announced, in the Palazzo Reale, celebrates the nonconformist talent of the artistic duo Luigi and Iango straight from the poster. “We don’t like to send messages with our images, but we wanted to reveal something that existed beyond the photograph, the authenticity of the photo,” explains Italian Luigi Murenu (a native of Cagliari and now a New Yorker after adoption) and Swiss Jango Henzi . Artistic couple in life, for a strange cross of fate that brought them together at dawn after a costume party in Paris. “We were wearing masks, but we recognized ourselves as two similar beings, with a common vision: we work organically, discuss a lot, naturally experience conflicts, but they are meaningful and creative.”
Over the past decade, they have created the most important fashion covers (about 300 for Vogue) and almost always in black and white, gathering around them a number of talents who today are the same protagonists of the exhibition that opened on September 22 last year in Milan. About 100 reproductions. – some of which have not yet been published – and works from their archives: among them icons of modern culture – from Marina Abramovic to Mikail Baryshnikov – artists such as Madonna, M.Ahmoud and Blanco, Dua Lipa, Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodovarand a section that Luigi Murenu calls “a cathedral of top models,” with Gisele Bündchen, Vittoria Ceretti, Mariacarla Boscano, Naomi Kampbell and all those who have missed their target in recent years. Intercepted in Florence by cultural adviser Tommaso Sacchi, Luigi and Iango will remain at the Palazzo Real until November 26.
“This is our first solo exhibition, rather than a retrospective, we consider it an introspection to understand where we are in our work. Some comments also surprised us, such as those who found a certain reference to Pre-Raphaelite painting in our images,” says Jango Henzi. The photo he portrays really looks like a painting. one of their muses, Lynley Eilers, is pictured in the back., but then he also plunged into the tank like a sea creature. “She is one of our role models, as is curvy model Precious Lee, who began to cry with excitement when she saw her portrait. And then Madonna, who is also on the cover of the catalog accompanying the exhibition: we asked her to portray not a diva, but a mother– explains Luigi Murena.” She is a mother of six, a loving friend, an activist, and we wanted to photograph her as if she were saying a universal prayer.”
And among the muses too Marina Abramovic in the photo with a fish in her hand, in the kitchen of two artists. “To enter the living and working space of Luigi&Iango is to enter a completely different world, where everything is possible: “I stand in front of the camera, holding a fish in my hands, from which blood is still dripping,” the artist writes in one of the prefaces. which accompany the catalogue. TO”Then we cooked and ate this fish.”, reveals Luigi, hinting at the very thin line between life and work, between art and everyday life. “We really strive to understand the person we are photographing, and only through this approach can we gain their trust: we like to find out who the person we are photographing really is.”
The exhibition presents a series of different images: from a portrait of ninety-year-old Yoshito Ono, photographed in Tokyo, to the portrait – the last in his life, before his death – Japanese composer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto.right down to the “obnoxious” Bella Hadid shot in New York. Women in hoods like Kim Kardashian photographed in Los Angeles (“we are interested in seeing how a woman feels without hair”) or, like Gisele Bündchen, in Costa Rica, by the sea, under a plastic blanket, to understand the environmental damage of our time. And again Cate Blanchett – also in a hood – and Vittoria Ceretti with dancer Hugo Marchand.
The world of clowns also reflects the task of the creative duo: Irina Shayk is almost unrecognizable with her face painted to look like a clownery. Wax work with disturbing photographs such as that of Malgosia Bela, and discussions about diversity with the wrong face of Moses Sumney. A review that ends with a photo that two photographers particularly liked: и hand of Pier Paolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, with a tattoo saying: “We don’t want to lose the dream right away.” This is Pasolini’s thought, it represents a lot about us, it is a manifesto of our work.”
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