SUSPENDED POSSIBILITY

Pucci’s pictorial images are stolen fragments of life, poignant visual short stories drawing on themes of loneliness, sensual intimacy, emotional significance, and capturing the tender tremor of possibility in everyday incidental moments. In the series, mostly shot at dusk or at night-time, Leonardo Pucci invites us to reflect on the meaning of intimacy using the lens as an indiscreet eye on moments in the lives of individuals or couples completely unaware of being portrayed in those spaces where they feel protected and at ease.
The force of the images does not lie only in the delicate sensuality of the subjects or in the voyeuristic attitude tout court, but in the fragile tension that these visions induce in the viewer.
In these episodes the plan of the inner narration of the observer grows with a delicate force leading him to a curious emotional complacency, almost as if that “story” ultimately draws from his own experience or fantasy.
Even when the subject is not a living being, every image is presented like a fragment suspended in time and space, an episode of a non-univocal story.
As Leonardo explains: – “They are crystallized instants and therefore appear strangely like a canvas that everyone, naturally and effortless, recognizes adding his own meanings, tales and emotions which go beyond the image itself.”
The place and time of the shot meticulously reported for each photo create a false idea of narrative flow while in reality amplify this possibility, intimate and subjective, of a story underlying every moment: “This eventual story is made even more plausible and acceptable because it draws directly from the mind of the observer, from his dreams, his desires, his memories and not least from his need to have his own reverie told.”
Even the particular color contrast and the subject locked up in converging lines and color spaces make it incredibly immediate and easy to enter into a world usually secretly hidden, cancelling the distance between the observer and the subject.
“I worked using a muddy saturation with palpable hues, almost three dimensional, and for the print I chose a very thick and porous cotton paper. I wanted to amplify the pictorial and sensual atmosphere of each image. As in a story by Carver or in a painting by Hopper, it was important for me to bring out all the possible emotional value of this unveiled intimacy.”
Stolen in urban landscapes around the world the series “Suspended Possibility” resumes and amplifies the previous project “Episodes (without a real order)” that made his debut last year at the Robin Rice Gallery in New York and was curated by author Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi.
The project was shown at the Sunaparanta Arts Center in Goa, then at Project 88 Gallery in Bombay and closed the Indian “grand tour” of Leonardo Pucci at the prestigious Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi.