Gamma Knife

“In these images there is no escape from Danieli’s unforgiving historical autopsy. The meaning of our objects is akin to the repressed of the unconscious. Our objects are as treacherous as our memories. Danger is everywhere present, it is lurking, it recurs, or surfaces, in brutal, often virulent form. Our entire inventory is contaminated, no one escapes, no object is immune, no image free of the infection.” – from the Introduction by Timothy Druckrey
Once in a great while, a body of work so different from anything that has come before it, yet so clearly a product of the human life experience, finds its way to the surface. Francesca Danieli has created such a group of pictures, born of her own experiences and coming to terms with her own mortality. The 32 plates reproduced in this book, the artist’s first, are as disturbing in their subject matter as they are seductive in their formal beauty. Yet the chasm between anxiety and an all-enveloping warmth is bridged so masterfully in Danieli’s unlikely collages of medical afflictions and antique furniture that to look at her work is to surrender all thought of knowing what is what, and instead to embrace a common unknown. Limited edition of 500 copies