Look Twice - John Hilliard, Doug and Mike Starn
11.09.2021 - 09.01.2022

The nineteenth exhibition at the Rolla Foundation is Look Twice, featuring the English artist John Hilliard and the Americans Doug and Mike Starn. 

The exhibition consists of twelve works of different formats, arranged in the spaces of the former Kindergarten in a delicate and vibrant dialogue. The works belong to the private collection of Rosella and Philip Rolla. 

In the catalog text, Emma Nilsson writes that the encounter between the works of John Hilliard and those of Doug and Mike Starn offer a glimpse on the comparison of two important points of view from two different generations of conceptual photography, both exploring the essence of the photographic image. 

John Hilliard (1945) studied art in the ‘60s, first at Lancaster College of Art, and then at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London. He began to be interested in photography in order to immortalize his art installations, later exploring the manipulation of the photographic process and its limits, which he felt too many. 

Doug and Mike Starn (1961), identical twins, have been working together since the age of thirteen. In 1985 they first received critical acclaim for their ripped photographs, giving the photograph a painterly and even sculptural physicality. “The only way for the creative mind to function is through anarchy [... ] Photography, as a rule, has too many rules.” Since then, they have been combining traditionally different disciplines such as photography, sculpture and architecture. One detail emerging from the catalog that sets them apart is that they want the images of their works reproduced with their frames, being an integral part of the work itself.