Maldonado, Guitemie, Artforum International
GALERIE LE SOUS-SOL
In 1999, Swiss photographer Istvan Balogh produced a series called "Citta" (City): thirty photographs, all vertically oriented and of the same size, affixed to aluminum. The pictures had been taken in and around a university housing complex in Rome--a true city within a city. Close-ups of students going about their everyday activities and shots of architectural details from facades and interiors alternate with broader views of the setting and its inhabitants. As with his previous presentations of this series, Balogh here extended his dialogue with architecture to the exhibition space itself: A large band ran the entire length of the walls, its salmon hue evoking a color typical of the facades of southern Europe; above this line were ten photographs, unevenly spaced and fastened to the wall like marble plaques. Their hanging underscored the play of architecture within architecture. To the right of the entrance was an image of another doorway: Two men enter a building, the Clinica Ortopedica e Traumatologica. F acing the gallery door was a photograph showing a large window through which the visitor seemed to be pitched into the campus park.
The series explores the theme of the individual--alone or in a group--in the city. The latter is embodied by its architecture, so easily datable from the '30s. Woven together just beneath the surface of these images are traces of past, present, and future. The past is that of Italy itself as embodied in its architecture, the present is the daily life of today's Roman youth, the future is the unknown for which the educational process should be preparing them. …