Platea | Palazzo Galeano presents from Saturday, November 11, 2023, to Friday, January 12, 2024, a new exhibition project conceived specifically for the showcase of Corso Umberto and to interact with the surrounding urban fabric: the solo exhibition of one of Italy's leading photographers, Carlo Valsecchi (Brescia, 1965), titled Caseus #01215, curated by Gaspare Luigi Marcone.

"Caseus # 01215", curated by Gaspare Luigi Marcone, is a photographic installation that originates from the photographic project undertaken by Carlo Valsecchi at the invitation of Ferrari Giovanni Industria Casearia. It documents the activity and architecture of the Ossago Lodigiano and Bedonia facilities. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of its foundation, the historic Lodi-based company, a leader in cheese production, wanted the creation of a photographic volume celebrating its centuries-old artisanal tradition and the fundamental cultural and human capital that defines the brand. The result is the book "Ferrari Giovanni Industria Casearia 200 years," published in May 2023 by Dario Cimorelli Editore, with texts by Angelo Pannofino, from which the exhibited work at Platea derives.

The project's title, the Latin version of the Italian word "formaggio" (cheese), followed by the numerical code assigned by the artist to the image, might also allude to a constellation, a galaxy, or an astronomical entity. It plays with the concepts of "chaos," "case," "casa" (home), and the name of the food that constitutes one of the fundamental productive elements of the territory, revealing the polysemy inherent in Valsecchi's research.

In his work, Carlo Valsecchi—internationally known for expansive landscapes, both natural and anthropomorphized, and for large photographic and editorial projects in diverse settings—conducts research on the relationships between light, space, and time. Space appears deconstructed through angles, cuts, and views that present a collection of microcosms, which, in large format, enhance into timeless portions and details. The perspectival shift between different scales, the identification of grids, and the abstraction of the subject are the main elements of his language that work on perceptual disorientation, revealing the most enigmatic component of reality.

The artist has reinterpreted various spaces, subjects, and objects of Ferrari Giovanni Industria Casearia, creating a new imagery and a new universe. Visually, his images may sometimes evoke the great "painterly" tradition of historical avant-gardes, tracing futuristic or metaphysical suggestions in compositions that range from abstract structures to verbal-visual concepts.

For Valsecchi, the foundational essence of his work is to grasp the deep mystery of the photographed places and objects. In this specific context, the artist has extracted the heart—or perhaps more than one organ—of a company born and rooted in the Lodi territory but has evolved over the centuries into an avant-garde structure with an international scope and high technological vocation.

The idea of metamorphosis, characteristic of Valsecchi's research, has traveled in parallel with the corporate and product metamorphosis. The image presented at Platea, although extracted from a broader narrative-visual context, possesses a specific nature thanks to the skillful use of technique and the artist's penetrating gaze, which sometimes revives and reveals objective data and other times metaphorical concepts, leading to "pure invisibility" or "spatial mystery."

During the exhibition "Caseus # 01215," a sound intervention by Mostafa Parsakia (Arāk, 1987) will also be presented. It is a poetic evocation of the latent sound in the production departments of the company, creating an auditory atmosphere different from the visual experience.