For its latest exhibition, Opera Gallery Singapore compares and contrasts the work of two French artists: photographer Gérard Rancinan and sculptor Mauro Corda.Rancinan began his photography career in the 1970s. At just 18, he was covering some of the world’s major events, with his work taking him from slums to stadiums, protesters to the Pope. As a photojournalist, he won five World Press Photo Awards in the 1980s.Rancinan eventually turned to fine art photography, often combining famous art historical tableaux with a modern, almost lurid sensibility — his images often feature implied movement that belies his extensive experience as a sports photographer. One such photograph, 2013’s “The Feast of the Barbarians,” became the most expensive piece by a living French photographer when it sold in London in 2014.The sculptor Mauro Corda is equally praised in his field. Trained at the famed Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Reims, he comes from a family of stonecutters. Although nearly always figurative and always fairly lifelike, his sculptures are never backwards-looking — except, that is, for his series of contortionists, many of whom literally look backwards.Corda uses modern materials like aluminum and stainless steel alongside the traditional bronze, and the coldness of the materials offers a contrast to the works’ often bizarre subject matter, which can range from a giant mosquito to a dwarf-sized Wonder Woman. Regardless of subject matter, the work is united in Corda’s talent for depicting the body, both human and animal, inspired by the ideas of perfection found in Greek or Roman sculpture.The two artists share an ability to reference the past while not being beholden to it. Corda’s sculpture might look to Greek sculpture and all sculptors directly influenced by it, but it could never be mistaken for it — it is something far more contemporary.Similarly, Rancinan’s fine art photographs make specific references to and often take their form from art masterpieces, but are different works entirely. A work like “The Dance,” with its multi-ethnic tattooed naked dancers recreating the famed Matisse piece, takes the original and updates and subverts it, changing its all-white (well, in the second Matisse version, deep orange) dancers to a group that reflects a modern multicultural world.Both have had exhibitions with the Opera Gallery previously (Corda in 2003 in Paris; Rancinan in Paris, London, and Hong Kong in 2011), and both feature in the gallery’s collections all over the world (as well as many other world collections), but this is the first time the two artists will be shown together.“Gérard Rancinan and Mauro Corda” runs February 26-March 13 at Opera Gallery Singapore.
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