To coincide with the Winter Olympics, when all Turin’s galleries will hold special exhibitions, Guido Costa Projects presents Shadow Chamber, a one-man show by the artist Roger Ballen. The exhibition brings together a large selection of his work produced since 2000.
Ballen is widely recognised as being one of the most unusual and innovative photographers on the international scene. American by birth, he has been living in Johannesburg for more than thirty years. His work first appeared in the 80s with large-scale, hard-hitting portraits characterised by a violent and ruthless realism, sometimes bordering on black humour.
Ballen has emerged from a grassroots documentary tradition (evident in his portraits of rural South African villagers). But his ingenious use of backdrops, often revealing pictorial influences, together with keenly balanced spaces has led Ballen into a theatrical dimension where concept and image are amalgamated perfectly.
A master of black and white photography, Ballen is tapping the vein of classical portrait photography established by the likes of August Sander and Diane Arbus. He loves conjuring up metaphysical and sulphurous atmospheres, that he adroitly manages to invest with humour, transforming the excesses of the image into small theatrical vignettes of the absurd, at once pathetic and grotesque.
Shadow Chamber is the title of the latest book of Ballen’s work and also this new exhibition, which brings together almost all the shots published. Animals have always played a central role in his work, as can be seen in this installation; they can be pets, alive or dead, often caught in a paradoxical relationship with the world of humans, where they perform a sort of macabre dance, sometimes alarming, but more often than not tragicomic.
Ballen is able to handle and measure these ingredients without slipping into end-in-itself or bad taste work. Using these elements the artist has been able to carve out a strong personal identity, which makes his work unique and unmistakable in the field of contemporary photography.
Examples can be found in the most important collections of photography in Italy and abroad, and an important travelling retrospective of his work is currently visiting museums in France, Holland and Germany before concluding its tour in the Unites States in 2007.
Shadow Chamber will be open to the public until the end of April 2006.

Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950. He has been living in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the last thirty years. His work as a geologist has provided him the chance to explore the heart of African society, which he has revealed through studies and portraits of an extraordinary psychological and social depth. He has been active in the international art scene since the early 80’s and has exhibited in museums and private galleries worldwide. His work can be found in the MoMa in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Johannesburg Art Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum. A retrospective of his work is currently on show in the Frans Hals Museum in Harlem, Holland. In January 2006, the exhibition will move to the Museum voor Fotografie in Antwerp. In August it will go to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, before moving to the Durban Art Gallery in November, and then on to the Consejeria de Cultura y Deportes in Madrid in December. The exhibition will then finish its tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art in April 2007. His books are published by Phaidon, London. Roger Ballen is represented by the Gagosian Gallery (New York, London and Los Angeles) and by Guido Costa Projects in Turin.