RAFFAELA MARINIELLO
April 24th - May 30th 2004

Opening: Saturday, April 24th 2004, 5:30 pm

The Galleria Ronchini Arte Contemporanea , which since 1992 has been actively presenting the research of international and art historical artists, has been working in last few years at the promotion of the activities of young and talented Italian artists, focusing its attention on Neapolitan artists with considerable artistic value.
Following those of Sergio Fermariello, Giuseppe Maraniello and Peppe Perone, a solo exhibition of the photographer-artist Raffaella Mariniello will be opened at the gallery on April 24th.

Raffaela Mariniello was born in 1961 in Naples, where she lives and works. She approached photography when she was 20, collaborating with a news agency. From that experience in a city constantly mentioned in the national news emerges a careful gaze toward the urban landscape, whose contexts become poetical and ironical images belonging to a new vision of reality. The confrontation and the consideration of social and cultural themes which have characterized our times, make her artistic research particularly sensitive to the consumer relationship between man, his everyday objects and the place where he lives.

In 1991 the crisis of the iron and steel industry marked the shutting down of Italsider in Bagnoli and shortly afterwards the conversion of the area which it occupied became a matter of continuous discussion within the public administration. During those months, Raffaella Mariniello began a photographic campaign on Italsider. Her lunar and metaphysical images of the factory, printed in many newspapers and magazines and also used as a book-cover for a novel (Mondadori), in a few years became a unique and historical witness.

Since 1986, with an exhibition at the Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes in Naples, she has had various one-man shows. Her work Bagnoli, una fabbrica, (catalogue Electa, Naples 1991) was exhibited, between 1992 and 1995, in Naples, Nantes, Paris and Milan.
In 1994 she began an intense working partnership with the Galleria d'Arte Contemporanea Trisorio in Naples, where the series Moltitudini (1995) and Natura morta (1998) (catalogue Sama , Naples 1999) were displayed and where she clearly distanced herself from the traditional photography. Moltitudini was displayed in Verona and Marseille; Natura morta in Rome and Turin.
Napoli veduta immaginaria (catalogue Motta Editore, Milan 2001) is the last series realized in Naples exhibited at the Museo del Maschio Angioino in Naples (2001) and in Lecce at the Castello Carlo V (2002). She participated in various group shows in Italy and abroad, such as the XII Quadriennale d'arte di Roma (1996), the VIII Biennale di Fotografia di Torino (1999), I Festival della Fotografia di Roma (2002).

Her works are present in various public and private collections including: Maison Européenne de la photographie, Paris; Centre Régional de la photographie Nord Pas-de-Calais, France; Banca Commerciale, Milan; Fondazione per l'arte contemporanea Re Rebaudengo Sandretto, Turin; Fond National D'Art Contemporain, Paris; piazza Cavour metro station, Naples.