On the occasion of the first edition of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, the Project Room hosts Heatwave, an exhibition by the young South Korean artist Dongkyun Vak, winner of the third edition of A New Gaze, a biennial prize created by the Swiss Art Vontobel Collection and dedicated to contemporary photography.

With over twenty photographs, including lightboxes and medium and large format prints, the exhibition explores the relationship between living beings, nature and technology in the contemporary world. The images of natural and anthropized landscapes, of mechanical prototypes and vehicles, of architectures and the bodies that inhabit them do not directly record the environmental catastrophe but, on the contrary, recompose a visual catalog in which technological innovation and eco-compatible design trace a new path of coexistence.

Vak uses the seductive aesthetics of fashion photography to reconstruct an aseptic space in which to reflect on the role of technology, innovation and knowledge in this historical turning point. By re-staging or reconstructing multiple moments, scenes and situations, the artist compares the ingenuity of nature with that of the factory, thus reasoning on the idea of a new configuration of today's landscape. The project takes inspiration from the notion of the Anthropocene , a term that identifies the current historical period as a new geological era in which, unlike the past, the effects of human activity are superior to the geological and evolutionary impacts of the planet. From this assumption derive not only concern and fears but, as Vak highlights, also new challenges for the future, in the direction of a change in lifestyles that intervenes on issues now well known such as global warming, climate imbalances, loss of habitats and biodiversity.