Tre sequenze per voce sola [Three arrangements for a solo] - the second solo show by Francesco Arena, presented by Galleria Raffaella Cortese. As in 2015, the exhibition is articulated in the three gallery spaces, with the same ratio of one work for each room. Consistent with the artist’s research interlacing historic memory, shared and private, Tre sequenze per voce sola, marks a new chapter in Arena’s poetics.
Image source: Galleria Raffaella Cortese
As in 2015, the exhibition is articulated in the three gallery spaces, with the same ratio of one work for each room. Consistent with the artist’s research interlacing historic memory, shared and private, Tre sequenze per voce sola [Three arrangements for a solo], marks a new chapter in Arena’s poetics. The title, taking after the “sequence” by composer Luciano Berio, conceptually unfolds the partition of the show: three works by three stories, eachnarrated by a single voice, where history, time and space are blurred.
Image source: Galleria Raffaella Cortese
In via Stradella 7, Angolo Scontento (Hommage à la mort de Sigmund Freud) [Discontent Corner] is a hollowtriangle suspended above the ground. The copper sculpture, matt on the outside and mirror polished on the inside, encircles a seated person born in 1939, the year of Sigmund Freud’s death: he tells the story of his life. The work embodies the temporal distance between a permanent act (Freud’s death) and the now. The idea of a death commemoration is analyzed through its opposite: a life, the one of the performer, started at the decease of the founder of psychoanalysis. The sculpture is destined to change in time: the performer will grow older year by year as the distance to the year of Freud’s death, until it will not be inhabited anymore.
The second story is to be heard in via Stradella 4, from a magnet tape recording. This sculpture blends time and distance. There is a formula to calculate the maximum distance between an horizon and the person gazingat it. Linea nita (orizzonte Gianluigi) [Finite line (Gianluigi horizon)] consist of a magnetic tape as long as thedistance between the observer and his horizon, on which he recorded his story: the point of observation, in this case Gianluigi, is 168 cm above the ground, determining a tape 4.630 mt long. That contains a time of recording of approximately 6 hours 46 minutes and 8 seconds. The work becomes a portrait/self-portrait that can be eventually commissioned.
In the third act, protagonist is the silence on a truth too long concealed. On a plinth at the center of the spacein via Stradella 1, rests Marmo con 3274 giorni [Marble with 3274 days], excavated to contain a pile of pages from an agenda. The number of pages corresponds to the amount of days from October 23rd, 2009 and October 10th, 2018, the rst being the day of the mediatic announcement of Stefano Cucchi’s death while in preventive detention. The second marks the day of the testimony that incriminates four agents of the Italian military force for the beating that led to the captive’s decease. For 3274 days this violence crime had been denied by the corps as well as by a good portion of Italian politicians, even though evident on the victim’s body.
The works composing the exhibition are three non- ction narratives. Cyclically, motifs undercurrent Arena’s production come back and are investigated anew: the fascination towards the numeric domain, often determining the formal aspect of the works, the re ection about the owing of Time and the concept of monument as memoryand sign.
Francesco Arena thanks Gianluigi Trevisi and Davide Viterbo for the realization of the work Linea nita (orizzonte Gianluigi).
Francesco Arena, born in 1978 in Torre Santa Susanna, Brindisi, lives and works Cassano delle Murge, Bari. His work has been shown in several Italian and international institutions, among which: Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Castello di Rivoli, Rivoli (TO); Triennale di Milano, Milan; Frac Franche-Comté, Besançon; Olnick Spanu Art Program, Garrison, NY; Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; Museion, Bolzano; Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, Brasil; Peep Hole, Milan; De Vleeshal, Middelburg, The Netherland; MAXXI, Rome; Nomas Foundation, Rome; Fondazione Merz, Turin; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin.
In 2013 he participated to the Italian Pavillion at 55° Biennale di Venezia, Venezia curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi.
Francesco Arena, Tre sequenze per voce sola
Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy
Until April 24, 2019
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