"Flipped Orlando: Panoramas by Roberto Bocci" at the Orlando Museum of Art

“Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”
 
This text was embossed on a plaque before the entrance of the first 1971 California Disneyland Park. After forty years, it still embodies the spirit of Walt Disney to construct an experience for visitors to escape reality and enter a world of fantasy, simulation, and imagination.
 
Flipped Orlando: Panoramas by Professor Robert Bocci at the Orlando Museum of Art explores his experience in the constructed environments of Orlando’s theme parks. In a simulated environment like Magic Kingdom where live animals coexist with their robotic reconstructed counterparts or Epcot where historic buildings are reproduced and scaled-down, Roberto Bocci finds himself immersed between two worlds: that of fantasy and that of reality. Using images he took during his recent trip to Orlando, Bocci reveals his experience by combining several images from a moment in time and creating a narrative that retells his story. “At times I truly wondered if I was still experiencing reality, a simulation or maybe I was being flipped between two states of being,” said Bocci.
 
Much like a painting that requires brushstrokes, his composite panoramas involve a process of assembling different images by cutting, overlapping, and resizing them to create one cohesive composition. In selecting from hundreds of photographs, these compositions not only reflect multiple points of view and simultaneity, but they also capture various moments in time. Bocci reveals a 360-degree view of the world as seen and experienced by the artist. Each photograph acts as a building block that is remapped to create a new image that becomes a portrait of the artist’s mind.

About the Artist

Roberto Bocci is a photographer and multimedia artist born in Siena, Italy. His artistic concerns encompass multiple points of view and questions of personal and social identity. He has shown his work in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Bocci has been awarded fellowships and grants including a Fulbright Fellowship and Woodstock Photography Grant among others. His work includes photographs, installations, and digital images. Currently, he lives and works in Arlington, Virginia and Washington, D.C., and is an Associate Professor of Digital Art and Photography at Georgetown University.