COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
ITALIAN ACADEMY FOR ADVANCED STUDIES
Pietro Reviglio
CINEMATOGRAPHY OF URBAN MADNESS
Extended!
APRIL 6 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2011
Gallery Hours: Weekdays from 9:30-4:30 pm
Contact (212) 854-2306
The Italian Academy
1161 Amsterdam Avenue,
New York, NY 10027
Cinematography. Doubt. Folly. Rationality and irrationality merging across the background of
the New York metropolitan area.
Cinematography of Urban Madness is a project of artistic contamination and synthesis between
cinematographic and photographic narrative. Focusing his attention on the image seen as a film
still, Italian artist Pietro Reviglio recreates fragments of an imaginary screenplay revolving
around the figure of an artist and his studio, a New York interior in which alienation intertwines
with folly and tension gives way to violence.
The project combines elements of photography, video and writing, to unveil the dark side of the
artistic practice, its places, subjects and objects, mixing cinematographic fiction with
autobiographical material. Through contrasting narrative and image, and eliminating all cause
and effect relations, Reviglio recreates the scrambled structure of distorted thought, investigating
the very process of visual narrative and challenging its canons.
The video Cinematography of Urban Madness may be previewed at www.reviglio.com/videos
Reviglio’s book, Cinematography of Urban Madness, is available for viewing and purchase (this
is the53rd title of the disegnodiverso series curated by noted art editor Paola Gribaudo).
“A riveting new book, Pietro Reviglio’s Cinematography of Urban Madness questions the nature of real and imagined cinematic narratives in a visually stunning manner. The harsh lighting of an artist studio sets the tone for this short enigmatic work wherein autobiography meets fiction with violent overtones.” Jason Stupa,
NY Arts Magazine, Fall 2010
Born in Turin, Italy in 1976, Pietro Reviglio has exhibited in the United States, Italy, Japan and
the United Kingdom. He studied at the Art Students League and received his PhD in
Astrophysics at Columbia University. Applying a scientific approach to the analysis of visual
elements and using physics as a pictorial medium, his work experiments with the physical
process of image formation and perception, visual narrative and the kinematics of images,
exploring the borderline between the rational and the irrational, the conceptual and the physical,
and the mathematically predictable and the stochastic.
To view the exhibition, please call (212) 854-2306 to make an appointment.
The Italian Academy is located at 1161 Amsterdam Avenue between 116th and 118th Streets,
NY, NY 10027
Contact: Allison Jeffrey: aj211@columbia.edu