Andrea Catoni

Spines: Images from a Possible Future

4th Floor Gallery

 In November 1983 television network ABC aired The Day After, an apocalyptic film that imagined a full-scale nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. More than 100 million people watched the initial broadcast; at 13 years old and conscious of the real threat posed by still-warring superpowers, I was left with a hauntingly vivid image of a cataclysmic possibility. 

Andrea Catoni takes us on a journey through another sort of cataclysmic landscape, one whose precipitating event is unknown and perhaps more diffuse. Drawing from his experiencemaking still photographs for the film industry, Catoni gives us cinematic images that suggest the aftermath of a war in which humans are again their own worst enemy. The slow tempo of the images, rich in the tones of silver salts, do what photography has always done—render beautiful the effects of age, decay, and even devastation. But here the creeping vines and resplendent underbrush suggest that nature may–in our absence–ultimately recover. 

In a time when the unrelenting optimism of late capitalism still suggests that unrestricted growth is both desirable and sustainable, Catoni’s archeological images insist that we collectively listen to the urgent consequences of privileging the few at the cost of the many.

Deirdre Visser

Curator of the Arts at CIIS