Longing (2017)

The exhibition Longing at Studiolo Berlin brought together the work of photographer Daniele Ansidei and Los Angeles based industrial designer Jonathan Olivares. The exhibition critically enquired through the medium of photography and sculpture one of the most persistent human experiences: the sensation of longing – the longing for the other, the unknown, the exotic.

In the first part of the series Life is somewhere else, Ansidei’s images, equally objective and powerful, show fenced in animals native to Africa, such as lions, giraffes and flamingos, in strange and artificial environments. The contrast between the exotic animals and the seemingly industrial environments where they find themselves deliberately plays with the conflict of otherness and lends the images a sense of strangeness and alienation.

In the second part Time heals everything but wounds, Ansidei is not only concerned with the keeping and public display of animals in zoological grounds, but also with the phenomenon of display in the museum context. His close-ups of preserved animals in natural history museums are like topographical photographs of alien worlds. The cracks and fractures on the surfaces of the lifeless specimens give them the appearance of inhospitable and deserted landscapes, revealing the quiet traces of past occupation and ruin.