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Dummies

The Dummies project presents around 30 photographs produced over the period between 2010 and 2014 and shot while travelling in different European countries. The works, printed and exhibited by courtesy of PhotoSyntesis Gallery, are being presented to the public for the first time and belong to a vast collection that will be displayed in late 2015 and 2016 at a number of Swedish galleries. Ephemeral but yet disturbing. Grotesque but yet mysterious. Mere industrial artifact and commercial support by definition whose non-existing artistic ambition and distance from any possible cultural sphere make them impermeable to any esthetic judgment. Unwarily desperate beings, lifeless outcasts, symbols and reflections of our emptiness and empty values. Representing men up to the point of empathizing with them and unwarily impersonate them with the result of ridicule, mock and commercialize them as well. Motionless, cold, stubbornly indifferent to our absent-minded glances in a game of mutual blindness. Deprived by the lack of awareness of their right of frustration for not having any control neither on the surrounding circumstances nor on the only elements that justify their existence: clothes belonging to no one yet. But they do indeed exist and mirror better than anything else the personality of their owners and of their audience: their sense of humor, their sense of style, their sense for estheticism, their fears, their phantasies and their vulgarity. They are what we think we are or better what we would like to be. Ultimately and paradoxically, their only deeply fascinating feature is represented by the fact of not possessing any obvious element of interest. They are everywhere, we all look at them every day, they look at us, and yet no one seems to actually notice them or spend a word that might confirm their existence. But here, today, for a very short time in their fake lives, they finally have their chance of at least pretending to exist. Against their will and against the will of the observer they are living their silent revenge. These photos were taken in European countries between 2010 and 2014. The scenography has been skillfully set-up by unknown professionals as unaware of their role as the dummies themselves.

Mirko Varano was born in Italy in 1973 and currently resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a selftaught B&W street photographer whose work has been exhibited in several galleries and museums in Italy and Sweden including the Fotografiska Museum and Galeri Kontrast both located in Stockholm.