Luciano Castelli and Photography
"The Miroir of Desire"

Luciano Castelli is known above all as one of the most representative artists of the "New Savages", a group of painters in Berlin that left a strong mark on contemporary art in the early 1980s. Alongside this, he has also built up an original photographic body of work, almost all of which is unpublished to this day.

Portraying his own person transformed, wearing make-up or masked, he focuses on himself as the object of his own desire. Thus, he places himself within the great tradition of the self-portrait. Three stages corresponding to three different geographical locations stand for the evolution of his work.

• Lucerne 1973/1979
• Berlin 1979/1989
• Paris 1989/1996

Lucerne : Since his earliest work, Luciano Castelli has partaken in many international exhibitions and notably in the famous Dokumenta V at Kassel in 1972.

The exhibition "Transformer", organised by Jean-Christophe Amman in 1974 at the Musée d'Art Contemporain of Lucerne made him meet Pierre Molinier and out of this friendship have come a series of photos and paintings.

Berlin: He joins the "New Savages" group that expresses itself both with boldness and exuberance through painting, music, film and photography.

Paris: Luciano Castelli has lived since 1989 in Paris where he draws inspiraton from Pigalle, his chosen area of residence, for a series of paintings and revolving photographs taken with a hand-built camera made by himself. The exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la photographie opens a cycle on the analysis of relation between painting and photography in contemporary art. Through the work of Luciano Caselli, who has used photography, painting and film over a span of 25 years, one of the most original and stimulating aspects of photography today is revealed : its cross-overs.

On the occasion of this exhibition a trilingual catalogue Luciano Castelli "Le Miroir du Désir" : Photographies texts by Erika Billeter and Jean-Christophe Amman, will be published by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.