Urbe relativa 30

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. The majority of the world’s inhabitants live within the confines of huge urban sprawls. But how does one tell of, represent, these “super-cities” that, not only because of their dimensions, but more importantly, because of their subversion of a traditional spatio-temporal order, no longer answer to the canons of classical representation? This is the difficult task that Giovanni Guadagnoli’s gaze has taken up in combining a lucid awareness of urban change with its strong expressive power. Aware that the countenance, or the soul, of globalized cities is no longer recognizable from our habitual points of view (since Istanbul nowadays is also Milan, just like we now find in Shanghai or Singapore aspects of New York or London), Guadagnoli superimposes images from one or the other city such that unexpected configurations arise, which no longer correspond to any particular location. Nonetheless, these images restore, even with greater intensity, the aura, the spirit, even the “tumult” of the new super-cities. Gigliola Foschi