On Thursday 5 May , the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art inaugurates the Surplace exhibition, curated by Saretto Cincinelli, which presents for the first time in the form of a unique and unprecedented installation the most recent photographic works of Chiara Bettazzi .

The 36 photographic works on display , coming from the series Still Life (2020), In effect (2021), Auctions (2021) Precarious balances. Elevazioni (2022), are all united by a point of origin shared also with the artist's installation practice, and represented by the large plastic and heterogeneous agglomerations of objects and fragments of affectionate objects that carry with them the memory and the stratifications of Surplace - which from the title evokes a certain idea of immobility, interruption, suspension - subverts the internal logic of the individual photographic series and presents them as a constellation that expands in the space of the National Gallery and requires the viewer to "arm" the look, so that what appears to be a single multitude can reveal itself in its infinite variations.

The shifting of the point of view marks the entire exhibition project at the root. If the photos of the Still Life cycle relate to an idea of still life, those of In effect reveal the provisional nature of a set waiting to be framed. In the Aste cycle, the photographs are transformed into vague “surrealist” trophies, suspended in nothingness and decontextualized, now far from the idea of the original pictorial genre, while precarious balances. Elevazioni reintroduces the artist's presence, highlighting the performative element inherent in every still life, where the objects are carefully prepared by the artist according to precise compositional rules.

Bettazzi's ars combinatorial materializes in a new and always provisional type of still life that from time to time laps the genre, referring to it but without ever truly embodying it.