Mani che imbrogliano is the second solo show by Alessandra Spranzi at Galleria P420, after Maraviglia (2014) and the group show Lumpenfotografie, towards a photography without vainglory, curated by Simone Menegoi (2012, with Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Piller, Joachim Schmid and Franco Vaccari). The new exhibition features recent works and others dating back to 1995, in a sort of punctuation of thought, or vision, that is always in the present but develops over a wider time span.

Alessandra Spranzi works in different ways and forms with the photographic image: she takes photographs of things, photographs of photographs, finding them, cutting them, indicating and erasing them. She intervenes when images and things reach a certain distance from their uses and become, so to speak, unaware of themselves, their possibilities, their beauty.

For Mani che imbrogliano the artist has prepared a grand magic show made with limited – very limited – means. Images from manuals, of objects found or gathered in the street, together with others that have always been there in the wings in our homes, gestures that demonstrate, that try to explain something. Like Harry Houdini, who for 50 cents offered to teach you “how to read folded messages in the dark.” Papers folded in the dark, perhaps with an image inside.

Alessandra Spranzi was born in Milan in 1962, where she still resides.

She studied at the Scuola Politecnica di Design and the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where she now teaches photography. Since 1992 she has had many solo and group exhibitions: P420, Bologna; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Centre National de la Photographie, Ile de France; Arcade, London; Fondazione del Monte, Bologna; MAMbo, Bologna; Galleria Martano, Turin; MAGA, Gallarate; Galleria Nicoletta Rusconi, Milan; Fotografia Europea, Reggio Emilia; Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo; Galleria Fotografia Italiana, Milan; MAN, Nuoro; GAMEC, Bergamo; Museo Marino Marini, Florence; Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan; Museo Pecci, Prato; Le Magasin, Grenoble; Careof, Cusano Milanino. Since 1997 she has created many publications and artist’s books.

Her latest book Uova, posate e altri oggetti (A&Mbookstore edizioni, Milan) has been published in coordination with the exhibition Mani che imbrogliano.