The Mappings project engages artist Roberto Lopardo in a series of photographic experiences in which one photograph is taken every minute, continuously during 24 contiguous hours, resulting in 1,440 images. The photographic residue, presented as a monolithic light-box, is sequentially ordered in 24 rows (one row per hour), with each row containing 60 columns (one column per minute). Each commissioned Mappings project, is site and time specific, resulting in a unique, singular work of art.
Each project begins and ends at a symbolic place and time. The artist does not follow a predetermined path, instead engaging the landscape and subjects as they naturally present themselves. The resulting images provide the viewer with an insight into a location’s visual chemistry, its colors, textures, habits, interactions, energies and biases all on display with equal import. The projects are not meant to become exhaustive surveys that impose authority, truth or hierarchical structure upon the landscape or subject.
The Mappings project attempts to reconsider and therefore relocate the role, relevance, and nature of photographic images in our postmodern, digital society. Beyond the intentional in-exhaustive literal repetition of the visual cliché that is present each photographic installation, the experience invites the audience to witness the behind-the-scenes formation of mini-documentaries, the arbitrary nature of hierarchical classifications, the construction of ‘authoritative’ environmental landscapes and portraiture. Throughout the experience the artist plays with deeply seated photographic notions of the revelation of the found, decisive, sublime and ethereal moments.
Roberto Lopardo was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1975. He carries a Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, a teaching certificate from Brown University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and Philosophy from Whitman College.
Lopardo previously taught at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, Dine College, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Arizona. He is the former Dean and Professor of Photography at the American University in Dubai. Lopardo has exhibited in many prominent venues including the RISD Museum, the US Consulate in Dubai, the Tenri Institute in New York, Video-Appart in Paris, and Emerson Gallery in Berlin.
