About Gianfranco Merati Studio

ARTIST STATEMENT

Science, nature, and discovery infuse all my work. I use my photography practice to explore and test the limits of visual perception.

I approach all my projects in a bespoke way; starting with researching and exploring the properties of the material selected so I can understand how to work it. I then begin experimenting with light. I explore how best to use it to contour the subject matter for clear and descriptive images. I have built-up repetition and contrast within series of photographs on each subject.

The geometry of nature is a huge inspiration to me. I often work with very closed crops of the microscopic structures I photograph. This transforms their intrinsic patterns and textures into the abstract, allowing space for the viewer to engage their imagination. I have made explicit the implicit intricacies of chemistry and physics, exposing the detail within common compounds such as water, glass, sugar, spices, flowers, and insects. My explorations have revealed flowers within droplets of magnetised fluid, colourful ice shelves within sugar crystals, and more.  

Complex problems are thrilling. I embrace the technically difficult as it challenges me to produce art that surpasses those challenges. Pushing boundaries, subverting expectations, endlessly and relentlessly searching for beauty and the unseen.

I am driven by the opportunity to make images that can be shared. I want to give people the opportunity to see the beauty in elemental structures of nature they would not otherwise see without my photographic lens.

BIOGRAPHY

Gianfranco Merati (b. Asmara, Eritrea, Africa) is an Italian photographer based in London.

Gianfranco’s motivation as a photographer is that ‘beauty is everywhere’. He seeks to reveal it. 
 

For the last decade he has been developing his photographic practice, through building skills and reflecting on projects. Influenced by living in Africa and then Italy, as well as time spent in other parts of the world, he photographed his surroundings. While travelling and living in different locations, he captured images that epitomized the place or documented encounters with people living there. During this period, he created several projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and China.

As his practice grew Gianfranco’s observation turned to investigation and he started developing abstract photography within a studio setting. Exploring the complex geometry found within nature, he has created many photographic series including projects revealing tessellating patterns within insects’ wings; magnetic fluid ‘pulled’ into rippling miniature landscapes; and the delicacy of flowers encased in ice.

Using both high tech methods and innovative use of basic means, each final image is exacting and verging on the unreal. This, despite the fact that Gianfranco does not manipulate his images to create any illusions in his work.