On Wednesday, October 7, the day before the exhibition opening, I had the opportunity, together with other tour guides, to meet the artist Volker Hermes, who introduced us to his exhibition “Identities Revealed – Hidden Portraits”, and I immediately decided to propose it as a guided tour because it was truly a “love at first sight”!
An exhibition with great potential, interesting both for contemporary art and for the history of portraiture and costume from past centuries, enjoyable, effective, well curated, and… for everyone!
Volker Hermes, a contemporary artist of German origin, reworks in a completely original way—using Photoshop—pictorial works depicting important portraits created by renowned international artists, including Jacometto Veneziano, Bronzino, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Batoni, spanning from the Renaissance to the 19th century. The analysis of clothing details becomes a starting point for reinterpreting the portraits and their meanings in a modern key, through a kind of “masking.” Wigs, ruffs, ribbons, laces, and masks present in the portraits are reworked to create something new without concealing the original; but… explaining Volker’s work without seeing it firsthand is difficult. I am certain, however, that his messages will come across immediately and effectively by visiting the exhibition with my explanations, and the exhibition will be a pleasant and fascinating surprise, just as it was for me!
Here are some of the things the artist explained to us about his work: “I would like to show that portraits were a luxury good reserved exclusively for a privileged elite. Every pose, every garment, the format, and many other details served as a statement. At the time, these statements were understood as something obvious. Today, we no longer understand these codes; we are accustomed to an overly quick and immediate analysis of people and events.”
To the pleasure of listening to the explanation of some works directly from their creator was added, for me, another pleasant surprise: seeing again some paintings from the storage collections of the Civic Museums of Pavia, which I had seen for the first and last time more than twenty years ago, during my university years. Yes, because Volker selected photographs of some of these paintings to rework them and then display them alongside the originals.
The exhibition, inaugurated on October 8, 2020, will run until January 6, 2021: what better opportunity, during the winter months, to come visit us in Pavia and spend a pleasant hour in the rooms of the Castello Visconteo discovering Volker Hermes’ work with us?
