Carlo Valsecchi | Tamen Simul #2 | Magazzino

19 March — 19 May 2026

Carlo Valsecchi’s work unites science, science fiction, and dream in a unique amalgam. His images appear simultaneously as documentary evidence and stills from a film set in a near, undefined future. He combines the hypnotic atmospheres of Evidence (the masterpiece by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan) with the timeless spaces shaped by De Chirico and the stunning settings of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which alternates cold spaceship and space station interiors with the searing dust of the desert.

It is not clear what is happening in the places where these photographs were taken, nor what happened before the photographer arrived. What is that hole that seems to swallow everything around it, floating in a perfectly white field? And those geometric shapes, halfway between a last-millennium video game and an Agnes Martin painting? From what vantage point was the image taken showing the earth burning and cracking under a blanket of smoke?

Perhaps it would not even be so important to ask these questions if the dominant sensation were not that of standing on the edge of a collapse (Armageddon), or on the contrary, of a great recomposition. Even in the midst of a suspended time (there is no trace of any event, no decisive instant), before these works one has the sensation of observing something essential, absolute, indispensable.

In Carlo Valsecchi’s work, each image functions on its own, independently of all others. In this sense, his approach brings photography closer to painting: there is no narrative, no sequence in the traditional sense, but a constellation of works conceived as self-sufficient entities, before which one should linger, question oneself, and finally lose oneself.

Magazzino
Via dei Prefetti, 17 – 00186 Rome
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