AeSSENCE

AeSSENCE is a collaboration project between the photographer Simone Bossi and the philosopher Alessandro Rota.

“You’re in the Eden.
You’re happy, although you don’t know what sadness is
You’re naked, although you don’t know what clothes are
You’re alone, although you don’t know what society is.
But, at a certain moment, something happens, suddenly
you feel something inside. You perceive a new sensation,
from your stomach. That something, undefinable, breaks
your peace. That feeling, that absence, force you to seek
a solution, and you start to look around, for the very first time.
Suddenly your gaze fixes on an object, and you start thinking.
I have to get that apple.”

"Simone Bossi is a young talented architectural photographer based in Milan. He has photographed projects by high-caliber artists and architects such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Richard Serra, Herzog & De Meuron, Piero Lissoni, and KAAN Architecten. During 2019 he presented (in)Land, his first solo exhibition at Divario Gallery in Rome. In the same year, the London Science Museum decided to show permanently a series of the photographer in its main hall. Since 2018 he occasionally collaborates with Alessandro Rota, a philosopher with an architectural background, which combines personal artistic research projects with the profession of interior architect.

Together, in this project, they question themselves what stands behind shapes, or inside them. Their research is parallel and intertwined: Simone uses his camera to reach something undefinable, Alessandro interrogates a twentieth century’s text, trying to define it. From the dialogue between the two disciplines, new questions were born and, with them, new partial answers. And so on, again and again.

The exhibition is a series of questions and scenarios, in which a sort of absence became present and operative. The specific topic is the perception of absence in architectural photography. Starting from L'Être et le Néant by Jean-Paul Sartre, Alessandro Rota discovers the interesting concept of the Value: something absent can guide human’s concrete actions. This conception of Absence is the interesting fil rouge that sews Simone Bossi’s photos: his sensitive archive shots look unequivocally beyond the forms of architecture. Most of the images are realized as fragments inside private spaces, apparently empties; they are aimed to reveal a sort of veiled intimacy presence through specific suspended atmospheres. A half-open window, a dangling fabric or a picture waiting to be hung, reveal a trace of an elusive human presence.

Towards something indefinable but strongly present, the couple tries to define better what that Absence is, landing on a final synthetic question, as simple as critical: is it really essential to find an answer?"

All images by Simone Bossi
Words by Alessandro Rota