Guido Argentini: Eros

The work of Guido Argentini has been evolving from his very first book, Silvereye, through the following four books until this latest project: Eros. From the abstract bodies coated with silver paint to the eroticism of Private Rooms and Reflections, the need of telling stories has become more and more urgent for Argentini. The images of Eros are only suggesting stories to the viewers. The use of the diptych, two images paired together, an image of a woman and a photograph of a landscape or a still life helps to create a narrative.

These stories are still and silent; they have no voice and no soundtrack. The stories are only told by the emotions of their characters. Each woman is dreaming and, at the same time, we, the viewers are dreaming of each woman depicted in the book. Imaginary women, imaginary places combined together with the magic of color that become, in this last project, a major creative tool for Argentini.

Flipping through the pages, we jump from antique palaces in Italy, to urban landscapes in Japan, to the desert of California. A Japanese lady is standing in a garage in Tokyo, screaming on the phone to her lover that is lying in bed in his flat in a building overlooking the Chao Phraya River in the night of Bangkok; A girl wearing a curly vintage wig inside an abandoned motor home in the California desert is holding a barbie doll that someone left behind a long time ago. A brunette with blue eyes is looking out of a car window thinking of her loved one that just left on a plane. An old Italian theatre with empty red velvet chairs on the left and a young girl wearing a red dress lying in an empty pool at night in the Arizona desert on the right side.

As it always happens for a still photograph, it can only suggest a story. It is only a single frame from a movie. Every viewer will make his own film, will make up his own soundtrack and will choose a different beginning and a different end, creating his own story.

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