
Unidentified Modern City
- Publisher
- JRP Ringier
- Year
- 2011
- ISBN
- 9783037642184
- Specifications
- paperback
80 pages
40 colour and 3 black-and-white illustrations
8.75 x 13 in
Text by Maurizio Bortolotti
Conversation between Gabriele Basilico and Dan Graham
Graphic design by Gavillet & Rust/Eigenheer, Genève
Italian / English
published for the exhibition "Unidentified Modern City, Globalized Brescia", Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, 2 April - 21 May 2011, in a special edition of 200 copies with an accompanying video
Commissioned by gallerist Massimo Minini, Basilico and conceptual artist Dan Graham turned their cameras on the southern edge of Brescia, an area that has grown, in Basilico's words, "like a new town", beyond the motorway and the railway line. The book sets this recent urban sprawl against the working-class housing built on the city's south-east side in the 1970s, and the two artists conclude, in critic Maurizio Bortolotti's words, that modern architecture's very lack of identity only makes sense when seen through the eyes of the people who actually inhabit it. The book pairs Basilico's photographs with a recorded conversation between the two artists.