ART CITIES:Milan-Francesco Arena

If one tried to compress a large part of Francesco Arena’s work into a formula, this could be as follow: numbers that take on form. From a linguistic point of view his work can be read as a development, a personal “derivation” of sculptural processes that arise from the geometric shapes typical of Minimal art and from the more archetypal ones of Arte Povera. But from a thematic point of view his pieces are often the translation of formulae and numbers linked to private and personal facts.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galleria Raffaella Cortese Archive

Things: flag, photograph, beam; lines: diagonal, horizontal, perpendicular; locations: floor, wall, space. These are some of the words on which Francesco Arena based his third solo show in Galleria Raffaella Cortese’s three exhibition venues, “Terza mostra: tre cose”. As in his two previous projects with the gallery, each space is characterized by the presence of a single work. Without any specific order in their visit of the spaces, viewers move from the low level of the floor with “Bandiera linearizzata” to the high one of “Orizzonte lasco”, to their union with “Sentenza in sei metri da zero a sessantasei centimetric”, which establishes a dialogue between height and walking surface. The exhibition stands as a sort of third stage in a ‘trilogy’ for the gallery with themes, aspects, and cross-references that run between the works on view and the two exhibitions that preceded it. The line that runs across the entire diagonal of the floor of the space in via A. Stradella 7 is comprised of the deconstruction of a flag. The ‘flag thing’ is here analyzed for its graphic and objective aspect without abandoning its symbolic significance due to the nation it is associated with. Once the nation is recognized, the work is charged with a relevant political value despite the fact Arena does not provide any specific reading of the work. Consequently, this expression of the symbol also becomes an expression of the ‘thing’. The H-beam maintains the function it was industrially manufactured for, namely working as an element capable of constructing a space, while also acting as a support for an inscription conceived by the artist. The engraved sentence “LE COSE VIVONO SOLO NEL PRESENTE, IL PASSATO E LA MEMORIA SONO UNA PREROGATIVA DEL GENERE UMANO “ runs along the work. This grants more substance to the exhibition project as a reflection on ‘things’ and restores a sort of ‘happiness of things’ that is intrinsic to their very nature. With “Sentenza in sei metri da zero a sessantasei centimetric” we, once again, understand how the titles of Arena’s works define and complete his works. The eternal is present in this work as each time it will be reinstalled the height of one of its two ends may vary. In doing so the work’s title will change accordingly with the variation in height. In 2012 the artist created “Orizzonte”, currently on view at the MADRE Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples as part of the exhibition “Utopia Dystopia: the myth of progress seen from the South”. The work consists of a beam supporting earth from the Lampedusa migrant reception center. This, of course, carries a strong symbolic charge. The element of the horizontal line leads to the horizon, a line that—the artist reveals—can also be found in one of the images within a book’s list of illustrations. The plate with the writer Thomas Bernhard in the foreground is dominated by three trajectories: the horizontal, the vertical and the diagonal. The photograph, published double-page spread in the book, becomes part of a ‘horizon line’ that runs across one of the exhibition space’s walls. In via A. Stradella 4 we return to reflect on the same element that had distinguished both “Transversal diptych” (2015) and “Linea finita (orizzonte Gianluigi)” (2019), in Arena’s previous exhibitions there. Arena’s 2019 work “Angolo Scontento (Hommage à la mort de Sigmund Freud)”, first presented on the occasion of the artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, “Tre sequenze pervoce sola”, has been recently exhibited as part of the exhibition “The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and has entered the institution’s collection.

Photo: Francesco Arena, Bandiera linearizzata (Detail), 2021, © Francesco Arena, Courtesy the artist and Galleria Raffaella Cortese

Info: Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Via A. Stradella 1, Via A. Stradella 4 & Via A. Stradella 7, Milan Italy, Duration: 8/9-18/11/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-13:00 & 14:30-19:00, https://raffaellacortese.com