Aquila

Snow covers the ground, the horizon is a dark ridge of mountain, and a low ceiling of milky cloud closes the sky; in the foreground a mass of red, blue and yellow burns absurdly bright. That arrangement—an inflatable bouncy castle stranded in winter—recurs throughout Stefano Cerio’s *Aquila*, and it is worth stating plainly what the objects are: not buildings but fairground and playground equipment, double slides, dragon castles, football pitches, photographed across different seasons in the Abruzzo countryside not far from L’Aquila.

Cerio, born in 1962 and working between Rome and Paris, has long circled the problem of representation—the ambivalent zone between what is seen, what is real, and what a viewer expects to find. *Aquila* turns that inquiry on forms that are all surface and no substance. Set against the mountain backdrop, the inflatables read as a mirage; the publisher reaches for Fata Morgana, and the phrase fits the way these gaudy, misshapen presences disturb a solemn landscape. The tone is melancholy rather than comic. One Italian account of the series identifies a performative tension and movement in the inflatables, a charge beyond mere awkwardness.

The book is an English-language hardcover from Hatje Cantz, published in 2022: 96 pages, 45 photographs, 250 by 300 millimetres, edited by Stefano Chiodi and designed by Giulia Boccarossa.

Why it merits a collector’s attention is best argued from the work itself. The title names the Abruzzo city, and Italian notices have framed the volume as an artist’s book honouring a city marked by earthquake—a reading consistent with the series’ elegiac weather and with Cerio’s habit of producing “a possible reality that may not be true, but at least plausible.” The collision of vernacular leisure equipment with the Abruzzo landscape belongs to a sustained inquiry into how photographs manufacture belief. Bright inflatable structures and the melancholy setting make that question concrete without turning the objects into permanent architecture.

The floor is covered with snow, the horizon is a dark mountain line, deep -hanging milky clouds cover the sky. In the foreground, a strangely shaped mass rises in bright colors – red, blue and yellow. In less than a minute, an inflatable bouncy castle, as you can often see on children's playgrounds, fairs and villages. These air locks are awkward in their form of double slides, dragon castles, soccer fields, which is similar to a Fata Morgana, lost out of bizarre scenes that Stefano Cerio Aquila created. Recorded at different seasons in front of the impressive backdrop of Abruzzo, not far from L ’Aquila, a series of great melancholy was created.Stefano Cerio (*1962) lives and works in Rome and Paris. His work deals with the topic of representation. They explore the ambivalent border areas between vision, reality and the expectation horizon of the viewers, and are productions of a possible reality that may not be true, but at least plausible.

Edited by: Stefano Chiodi
Designed by: Giulia Boccarossa
Artist: Stefano Cerio
English
August 2022, 96 Pages , 45 Photos
hardcover
250mm x 300mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-5320-3

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