Milano Gallery Weekend: we met Pamela Campaner and Alberto Meomartini for Expowall Gallery
Pamela, could you briefly tell us about your gallery and work?
Our idea of opening a gallery specifically centered on contemporary photography naturally came out of passion while the Expo was on in Milan. Expowall’s adventure began in 2015 in the historic Milan district of Porta Romana.
What resources are available today to engage the target audience?
Just like other art markets, photography is going through a time of change. Exhibitions are clearly no longer enough to interest people in art; if on the one hand it obviously takes time for newcomers to learn and become familiar with this contemporary language, it’s just as true that the field needs fresh ideas both on a cultural and commercial level.
Expowall started off from our personal connections. We involved the leading names in Milan’s business and cultural scene, while launching debut artists and investing in prestigious exhibitions and communication channels. Nevertheless, we strongly believe that there’s an urgent need for new commercial policies, namely a further segmentation of the market and the creation of ad hocopportunities for collectors and prospective buyers.
Of all the authors you’ve covered along the years, who’s been the most appreciated?
Our audience especially loved “Salvare l’ora” (“Saving the Hour”)by Giovanni Chiaramonte, one of the greatest masters of Italian photography. An exhibition with a painful genesis behind, born of the photographer’s own experience of disease and immobility. When his condition forced him to leave photography, Giovanni Chiaramonte let words find him, and he himself found a new way for everyone to live his photographs: “Salvare l’ora” is a collection of 63 snapshots that the author paired with haikus – brief, elegant poems that, in Chiaramonte’s experience, connect to the immediacy of photography. Giovanni Chiaramonte chose to tell his own journey of suffering and rebirth at our gallery. Our collaboration goes on with an important show to be held in Milan in 2021.
How do you see the art market today in Italy and particularly in Milan?
Although still growing, the photography market remains limited. From this perspective, the world of galleries needs to be reconsidered and explained to the general public, especially in Milan, where galleries are constantly at risk of being reduced to mere event managers: galleries think, choose, invest, organize, promise and sell.
Milano Gallery Weekend: which opportunities can stem from events of this kind and how are you joining?
Expowall is working on the frontline of the Italian Gallery Weekend, where we’re presenting a project with a mythological, ancient taste, inspired by our love for the land that’s a dream to the West, a crossroads to the East: Zanzibar, the island of the moon.
The love between two arts that meet, possibly like they’ve never done before: photography and sculpture, with no hierarchies, both in their own glorious, generous regality. “Black Lulu”is shaped by photographer Roger Corona and sculptor Vivide Mantero’s love for a different way of looking at the world.
Once curious, respectful guests in Zanzibar, Corona and Mantero will set up a site-specific installation where bare, stunning Zanzibarian women are adorned with “garments” molded on the pictures and blended with the work itself.
