Gabriele Basilico's Unflinching Gaze on Milan's Postmodern Architecture

Gabriele Basilico's exhibition at Galerie Anne Barrault in Paris (30 May – 18 July 2001) presents his photographic series on Milan, capturing the city's post-war reconstruction and postmodern urban fabric without aesthetic redemption. Basilico's work, radicalized since his French landscape missions, adopts a clinical, ascetic style reminiscent of the Düsseldorf School, eschewing picturesque skies or chiaroscuro for cold orthogonality and arid geometry. He treats the urban tissue as a living organism that metabolizes past and present strata, revealing historical sedimentations that make Milan a wounded yet resilient body. The historic core offers some respite with its wide avenues, while the suburbs exhibit harsher architectural disharmony and incoherence. Unlike Lewis Baltz's rigorous analysis of postmodern urban detritus, Basilico's interrupted city retains a sense of urban landscape and paradoxical affect, suggesting that the city still makes history and opens to subjective stories. The exhibition includes works from the reconstruction series, emphasizing oppressive, walled, and anxiety-inducing spaces.