PLAN B. ARTIST STUDIOS

ANTONIO REILLO

PLAN B TROPHIES

Plan B is in Greece, near Perachora village, looking the Corinthian Gulf. The view from Plan B dominates magnificent landscapes: the wild northern coast of Peloponnese.
It is the kind of places where an Italian (as I am supposed to be) can start dreaming of amazing holidays equipped with spectacular sights. Places from where is – usually – impossible to resist sending pictures. Today by smartphone. Yesterday by postcard.
Following the current retrò attitude of Late-Contemporary Art (actually quite scared by the Future) I have been seduced by the postcard option.

I have thought to play the (artistic) game mixing the traditional photographic clichè of Greek seaside with the sloppy and buggy attitude of Italian tourist when they are “al mare in Grecia”.
In a nutshell, taking a picture of a landscape for a tourist means to nick it and to bring it back to home as a sort of holiday trophy. At least in several selected contests. So I started to imagine these pictures like a sort of trophies where somebody (the semi-adventurous visitor) is portrayed inside a framework. But with a reverse logic: the main character is actually a bunch of eponymous and charming local views, on the other side the visitor becomes just a sort of (tragic or funny, depends) background.
The use of an exhausted tyre as a framework underscores the contrast between the everyday life in these places and the abusive imagination of visitors who are always committed to find (even sometime to discover) ancient ruins and extraordinary natural beauties. At the end of the day not the usual geometrically decorated classical frame but a dented tyre standing as a metaphor of the prosaic existences of the dwellers of these lands. The presence of a stunning Classical temple actually does not deprive local people of the opportunities offered by Modernity. The tyre is as well a kind of trivial "halo" to indicate the controversial kind of "sanctity" the touristic business often arises.
Anthropological postcards where the case study is the explorer-anthropologist itself (and his/her related prejudices).

Antonio Riello. Perachora, Greece. 7th of September 2024