Manipulating Reality
How Images Redefine the World

exhibition catalogue: Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, CCCS-Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina 25 September 2009-17 January 2010

Twenty-three international artists testify to new ways of depicting reality. The exhibition hosted by the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina examines the meaning of the term ‘reality’ in contemporary artistic studies that develop the various visual possibilities of representing the world in the ambiguity between real and plausible, concrete and apparent, past and present. The exhibition presents the works of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand and Paolo Ventura who, through photographs and videos, manipulate our perception of the visible and thus construct new models of reality. The catalogue accompanies the exhibition and has essays by James Der Derian (professor at Brown University, Watson Institute for International Studies), Harald Welzer (Center for Interdisciplinary Memory Research, University of Essen), Elena Esposito (professor of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of Modena) and Maria Janina Vitale (an art historian specializing in contemporary photography).