Gusmano Cesaretti
February 6 - March 6, 2010
Reception: February 6, 6-9pm

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Fifth Floor is proud to present, Mid Hour, a selection of photographs by Gusmano Cesaretti. Born in Lucca, Italy, and a resident of Los Angeles since 1970, Cesaretti has been capturing the sights, cultures and even emotional tenor found within his many adopted cities. As a result of his invested relationships with his subjects, be they people, buildings or landscapes, he is able to create photos that reveal an honest candor that might otherwise go unseen. For this exhibition, Cesaretti displays two separate, yet corresponding bodies of work. The first body, a series of stark, snowy Midwest landscapes present themselves almost as axonometric drawings. The thin and simple lines created by the branches evoke the stillness of a cold landscape waiting in limbo. The second body displays a series of portraits of Midwesterners and images from within a bank vault taken in a moment when the financial forecast of the U.S. is largely unknown. Both groupings point to the moment of stillness following a storm, waiting for a turn of events to bring a season of change.

Cesaretti has published two books: Street Writers- A Guided Tour of Chicano Graffiti and Physical Graffiti-4x4=24 and he is a contributing photographer to the book, 24 Hours in the Life of Los Angeles. His photographs have been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2008, Cesaretti participated in a major collaborative exhibition entitled, This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in Los Angeles Photographs at the Huntington Library. Fourteen of his photographs are part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C. and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Cesaretti has made photographic studies in many places including Mexico, Central and South America, Haiti, and South East Asia.