This book, conceived following Domenico Fargnoli’s exhibition, Trasparenze, at the Tornabuoni Arte in Florence, confronts Paola Binante’s photography with the artist’s thoughts in verbal-visual diptychs. An unexpected book, outside of conventional time, with images and sound; a narrative deeply rooted in a long history of research between psychiatry and art. The book cover reproduces the play of transparency and light shown in the works of the exhibition. In this latest performance, in the transparent acetate sheets, the image appears almost identically on both sides of the sheet. In other words, there is no privileged perspective, no unique sense to be ascribed to the images, there is no front or back while it is not possible to relate to a single painting disregarding the others at length. The perception of visual interference that inevitably arises from the works and between the works and the environment leads to a synthesis that includes movement, immersion in the space of kinesthetic experience. Images that attract and set out by a force that from the darkness causes a ray of light to escape: then everything changes and removes us from the risk of a timeless night. The photos in the exhibition from which the book is inspired refer to an installation composed of 14 large-scale transparent elements with reproductions of site-specific signs and paintings made by Domenico Fargnoli.

Domenico Fargnoli is a psychiatrist/psychotherapist. In 1991, he and Massimo Fagioli founded the psychiatry/psychotherapy magazine, Il sogno della farfalla, of which he is still the editor. He has written many articles and essays on psychiatrical and artistic subjects.