The project room of Fondazione ICA Milano hosts for the first time three works from the 52 Ludlow series by Giovanni Stefano Ghidini (1957, Urago d’Oglio, Italy), part of a broader project developed by the artist over a span of twenty-five years. This group of works conveys the essence of a research practice that intertwines nature, sculpture, and photography, originating in 1997 on the rooftop of a building in New York’s Lower East Side, where Ghidini cultivated and transformed sunflowers into monumental, anthropomorphic presences. Through a ritual of care, waiting, and transformation, the flowers become a metaphor for life, its cyclicality, and its impermanence. The platinum prints, produced in 2022, amplify the emotional depth of the images, revealing a silent and enduring beauty. 52 Ludlow is the first-ever presentation of the series and invites a slow, profound contemplation of time, growth, and the adaptive capacity of living beings.

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GIOVANNI STEFANO GHIDINI

Giovanni Stefano Ghidini (1957, Urago d’Oglio, Italy) developed a passion for photography from an early age and considers himself self-taught. After eighteen months at the Naval Academy as a photographer, in the early 1980s he opened his photographic studio in Milan, where he began working in the world of Italian fashion and entertainment. In 1994 he closed the studio and emigrated to the United States. At the end of the 1990s he found his ideal home, which also functions as his studio and laboratory, in Chinatown, New York. In 1998 his short film Venceremos, shot in Cuba, was selected by the Sundance Film Festival, the London Film Festival, and the Locarno Film Festival. After this brief experience as a filmmaker, for more than a quarter of a century he devoted his full attention and dedication to a single body of work, culminating in the creation of a series of images in which photography, sculpture, and horticulture merge and coexist.

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Fondazione ICA Milano thanks Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, the foundation’s official sponsor, Valsoia, and Enel for their support of the institutional program and activities.