Photo credits Aldo Sessa

In preparation for this year’s Miami Art Week, the Aston Martin Residences Art Gallery welcomes renowned Argentine fine art photographer Aldo Sessa, as the latest featured talent for its Virtual Art Gallery exhibition series.

Sessa’s exclusive exhibition, entitled “Seances and Ghosts,” is featured for two months as a three-dimensional immersive experience, replicating the residence’s physical art gallery on the 52^nd floor. The exhibit opens this week on the Aston Martin Residences website at www.astonmartinresidences.com.

The virtual exhibit presents a series of Sessa’s most popular photographs featured in the book entitled “Seances and Ghosts” authored in 2000 by the renowned American Science Fiction writer Ray Bradbury. This collaboration was one of Sessa’s most publicized works at the turn of the new millennia.

“Photography is the closest thing there is to magic,” says Sessa. “To think that you just click, and now it’s sitting on the film’s emulsion, or the digital camera, as a trapped image inside as something that is floating there, something unexpected, something no one saw but you. Being able to visualize and give perspective to it and take it to a certain scale, from something that was only one inch, to now two yards from an original picture that no one but you will know.” 

Sessa also presents “Cosmic Reflection,” an original photographic interpretation for the Aston Martin Residences’ permanent collection – inspired by the residences’ sail-shaped architecture and portraying the 66-storey tower illuminated under the moon against an incessant galaxy of stars.

Reflecting on this exclusive work, Sessa says: “In my artistic life, space has always occupied a privileged place in my mind. When working on this piece for Aston Martin Residences, I had a vision related to the immensity of space and infinite magnetism of the moon and the stars that illuminate it. The magnificent architectural presence of the building is enhanced by the blue diaphony of its crystals that merge in this magical night panorama.”

As a young boy, Aldo Sessa studied painting and drawing at the De Ridder Atelier and worked at his father’s printing press in Argentina. As Sessa’s artistic career progressed, his oeuvre grew to include graphic design, graphic arts, cinematography, and photography, with his photography eventually taking center-stage. Sessa’s work has since appeared in over 200 exhibitions and is included in private collections and museums worldwide.

In 1976 he held his first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, followed by two additional shows in 1977 and 1978 at the same institution.  One of his most accomplished collaborations came in 1979, when Sessa illustrated the book “The Ghosts of Forever” with essays and poems by one of the most celebrated 20th-century authors and screenwriters, Ray Bradbury, that was published by Rizzoli International in the U.S. In 1989, Sessa was honored with the first retrospective exhibition of a living Argentine artist at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. Gaining recognition and highlighting photography as a fine art form, Sessa was soon after Named Honorary Member of the Argentine Federation of Photography in Buenos Aires and Named a Member of the National Academy of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires in 1991. Beyond his participation in exhibitions at renowned museums and galleries around the world, he has also published more than 40 books of his work on themes such as New York City, Buenos Aires, gaucho culture and tango. 

In 1980, his painting “Humorum” was selected for the collection in the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C, and in 1976, the Argentine Government selected his triptych “Before the Beginning” as a gift to the U.S. Government to commemorate the Bicentennial Celebration of Independence. This work is still displayed at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center by NASA in Houston, Texas.

Sessa approaches all of his image making with a passion to illuminate the subject from his unique perspective and convey his fascination with light and shadow. Always carrying a camera, Aldo Sessa finds much of his inspiration in New York City and Buenos Aires, allowing his strong connection to each city to lead him to uncover extraordinary observations. 

Sessa’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Museum of Modern Art, Bogotá, Colombia; Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Academy of Fine Arts Collection, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, and the International Center of Photography, New York, NY.

Aldo Sessa’s Seances and Ghosts exhibit can be viewed from Thursday, November 23 at the Aston Martin Residences immersive 3D virtual gallery, at https://astonmartinresidences.github.io/virtualtour/.