GENOVA.- Lorella Klun, in the critical text that accompanies the exhibition “Mutazioni” by Gian Luca Groppi, describes him as “a modern storyteller, who mixes cards and genres, giving his works a caustic lyricism that deliberately does not offer solutions or panaceas, but is rather an attempt at trying to shake us from widespread social and emotional inertia.”

And here he is again the "storyteller", who brings together in this exhibition years of works that he himself calls "his only children."

“B(e)sides” is a collection of different works, in so far as size, content and forms are concerned, but, as always, through his visually surreal and ironic style, the always attentive and refined theatrical atmosphere of he who invents, designs and builds sets, they all tell stories of the instability, ambiguity and the continuous existential search of today's humanity.

In the images that constitute "B(e)sides", the staging of the works seems to want to make each character conscious of having finally found an author willing to tell his or her story. The color photograph of the girl who cuts a lock of her hair with a knife, not only marks the passage by the photographer to color, but it tells about the inevitable transition from adolescence to adulthood, to be also intended as a gift. "Flora" tells of the loss of innocence, which is not always negative, but can "flourish" into other experiences. In the "Seekers" the washtub with the man trying to find something on the bottom becomes a metaphor for humanity and its incessant need to always find the meaning of life. The result is only a handful of clay and the awareness that others are constantly searching without finding answers, except for a handful of mud that slips between our fingers which, after all, is the matter where we come from and where we will end up. In "Denied" through an almost subdued preparationtion of a neutral surface, we are preparing to absorb all the cruelty and waste of a society ready to nullify us. In "Apathy", through the use of an acrostic as a form of language, Groppi wants to represent through a performative act, an emotional condition (APATHY), so dear to westerners which does not belong, however, to a country like Cambodia, despite all its tragedies of the recent past.

These images, which Groppi calls "my only children, that is to say my safety valves: each work is governed by visions, flashes without much meditation", are characterized by a remarkably formal but also original and unusual ability for compositional synthesis, along with a cultured and refined noir vein, generate messages or reflections on our contemporary world, our existence and coexistence.