It is certainly his training as an architect what gives Bruno Giliberto (Santiago, Chile, 1981) a particular aptitude to understand the structure of built spaces and the way we use them. However, it is another kind of look -free from the burden of his profession-what leads him to a more aesthetical and subtle investigation about the experiences and individual and collective uses of urban places; starting from the absence or from vestiges, rather than from physical iconic manifestations.
Photography is a unique tool for this analysis and critical representation of everyday spaces and situations. Thanks to the timed and structured photographic record, mutations and continuities are revealed; architectural gestures and citizen responses renewing the awareness of our environment and the way we use it. Despite his absolute formal refinement, this is not about offering idealized visions of the artificial and imposing uniqueness of our architectural territories, as for example Andreas Gursky has done before. Bruno Giliberto does not use the image as mimesis, but he works on his physical presence as a means to transform the spaces where it lies: he is an agent of spatial metamorphosis.
In Proyecciones, Bruno Giliberto proposes a disturbing exercise. He has photographed one of the walls of the piano nobile and has moved its image, subtly adapted, to the upper room, where conferences are presented. The exhibited work becomes the mirror of the place that welcomes it, and takes a scenic and eloquent value. Somehow, we feel more present than ever with this phantasmagoria. Conversely, in the series Postcards, some figures are apparently transferred to sites recognized by the tourist imaginary. The way we position ourselves to admire architecture affects our identity.
Giliberto divides photographs into regular fragments in order to project them onto a mural. The set of the different units, and finally the whole, can be made from an ordinary printer, which implies that the final piece can be produced at free will, as a DIY project. But as the image shifts and projects onto a new space, transfiguring it, it may also close itself to an enclosed volume, contained within a book form, keeping a space only expressed as potential.
