 Francesco Arena's reflections runs on a red line over two main thematic; from one end the body as identity and to the other end aesthetics codes as in mass media languages. In the reconciliation process of man with his corporeity, indented as not just for his individuality but also for his pure physical dimension, Francesco Arena instores a interchanging relation, not only between the internal and the external of the body, activating a kind of liberation theme which allows man to become king of the world. Suspended thoughts and disquieting remarks link the images together, transmitting to the spectator the sensation of reading in the personage's mind, whose like in a dream will fade away with them. Links with the other aspect of research is evident where details clearly leave to intuition the practical ness of the linguistics codes which remain the same throughout the pattern: so, if from one end in the settlement of the identity, technical " media" component is present, at the same time in the coated photos with their vivid colours sensuality is without doubt a note. Photographic works travel on the same line as media communication, with their reassuring chromatic range, where the eye of a visitor will surely misinterpret the real intrinsic content of the message transmitted. Paola Magni  Francesco Arena for years has been working in the phot. Video thematic field. His research firstly orientated towards the external, on the de-composition analysis of the body and his possible alterations (both in a destructive and potential way; likewise body building for example), has slowly changed to an internal one, nearly introspective From his recent project Autobiographic, for definition by its own author, it can be seen a self reflection on memories of the own life and experiences which become publics and universal as if our life has already been lived. Quite symbolic is the video, which represents 50 characters (friends, emotive ego from the author, occasional splinters of lived), working over a background of images of our era, while a series of sentences underline the point of "fragments of thoughts in progress". A voluntary dubious autobiography where the fragmentation of concepts, thoughts and stories, produce neutral values where spectator can find part of his lived life. Recently Arena has returned to the photographic world and creates big images, which he calls "still life", even if they are far away from the media tranquillity of this style. Strong colours defined the balance between shock and idolatry, enunciating the social evils like, physical and mental violence, aids, and several other limitations. Elisabetta Rota  …Equally centred on ambiguity of communication codes, is the research of Francesco Arena, artist involved in the different photographic fields as well as videos installations. However thought this process another its possible to underline a new way of interpreting the reality, the autobiography 's one that its usually found in the body contempt, learn as emblematic "transport way", for its own individual discovery. The corporeity structure of this type of art, sounds in his work like boundaries of space, between interiority and exteriority, turning to a sort of neutral place of confrontation where the individual self can compare himself with the external reality. In his recent project "autobiographic", where the expression of different installations and in particular is homonyms video, the author, represents the image of his own body and other characters as well (selected for personal reasons or casual psychological connection), like a symbolic place, where personal and collective experiences join together like a oneness. Introspective and individual memories mixed together gave birth to an ambiguous external reality, creating a flow of image where anyone could find itself, in a game of loss of identity. In a more recent photographic series, named still life for lifelike people, ambiguity of communication 's sustained by the game of attitudes and manipulation of the linguistics art codes. On a mass media technique. Using peculiar impositions for these photos, Arena sells out images that are everything but superficial and ephemeras. And also the drama of those situations placed at the extreme discomfort, imagination and death are accentuated by the illusion of the nowadays-familiar codified representation of publicity. Matteo Fochessati  Since always, like history of art does teach us, the most searched object of representation has been the naked human body. Today though, for this "pervert" society, this is not enough anymore, it doesn't appeal any longer on its own, in fact its got to be accompanied by something tastier and a captivating even if artificial. Evolved society-whatever this could possibly mean, has got its manias. And wants more sacrifices to place on the altar of provocation, and the aesthetic, and pleasure. "Two are the things i'm more interested in: technique of love and technique of art. I gained both toughout ingenuity and roughness. With both i begun with nonsenses..." To work with art today requires courage. In a stoic moment that love "uncovered" things, the artist needs compromising. This is one of the reasons why art changed so much in the past decade. Long time ago we use to tell someone else's story; but recently we are invaded by this orgy of overridden lives, where is difficult to kindle new feeling thought art if not with an "I am" story. That's why starting from 60's with Gina Pane to today, the poor artist often find himself forced too expose his body, even better if offended, if homosexuals, or affected by AIDS. "The body is a new body", its sessuality is no longer a component of man. It's something different a form of art, of technology, of human invention." To be an artist today, courage is essential. Or to cut yourself to death on live, get shoot in an arm, get hang up or to subject yourself to more humiliating and degrading practices in order to become popular. Or for the need to search (maybe without founding) for different ways to tell that famous and unpleasant way of living, the illness of the world. That is the reason why relation with the owned body appears neurotic, and many want to change it, mutate it, or transform it completely. Or at least having a non-body. "Sex is the way to break the ice with the partner, is a direct way of communication. Love is what you find between the hard times in life and the complicate mechanism of our thoughts." In permanent lack of love, with the persistent sensual desire like a drugs addict, we are debating on this earth to find the meaning to be given to our in satisfactions as well as satisfactions. Art, drawing, music, photos, sculpture, dance, literature, prostitution (more or less legalised)-are part of our loneliness and it keeps comparing the reproductions on our inquisitions, without answers. Art is always sensual, because is the expression of a deep survival impulse of the self, of the unconditional desire of spreading own seed. That's why when comes across very aggressive, it can be compared to a rape. That's why people often, very often feel "raped" by some, so called "pieces of art". "Let my center be my axis around which your body rotates. Let me swim though your delta, thought the bowed heads, let me taste the black salted land, that i was a fish. i need your sea. let me bet your carnal show during the course of your life." Francesco arena is a today's' artist. Like Jesus Christ is only 33, he studied at the Academy of Belle Arti, he produces videos and installations, and he preferably works with photos. Indeed; years ahead he started from photos and only recently he got back to it, from one end like " a simple" professional photographer, on the other end, like an artist who uses pictures like a "way" not like a final product. That's why his works is even more appealing. Utilising the acquired experience throughout his professional life, Arena creates original big, STILL LIFE, that go well beyond the common death life normally public sized. Playing with words, more than death lives are living cultures that for this reasons might hurt. They appear quite smooth, soft and vivid, but with intrinsic hard meanings. Even for this reason Francesco Arena is an artist to follow. "Sex needs to be made outside the body, your body.I do not need you, i want new bodies: the ones with concatenation: women, gays, lesbians, transessuals, transgender." He is an artist to follow because he speaks of our present. In fact the precise task of art is the one to shake us, make us understand, put things into prospective, re-write our present in vision of the future: with the intuition of who fights first line, Francesco Arena understood long time ago that our bodies are not enough anymore, with his pictures he started getting into the new western society with its fetishes- so, after the change of subject into object, "POP" art- and the object into subject-neutral subjects and artificial objects loose one another creating a newborn object/subject of desire, neither neutral nor artificial ,where we still don't know what is more important; whether the living body, which is the starting point like a dangerous weapon, a malicious dress, an inadequate ornament, or vice-versa , that zip , those chains with the lock at the end , that stiletto boot, that knife. The academy "naked" the nice body, lasts in memory, like a background, like a scenography where you can represent something that up to yesterday would have remained lifeless, but that from today it gained a soul. Ferruccio Giromini Declarations of Francesco Arena are taken from his video AUTOBIOGRAFICA (1997) From the photos to the compositions, the ones generated from the assemblament of industrial objects put together, from the video to the installation, artistic intervents of Francesco Arena (born in Genoa in 1966) move freely in the modern art environment. From the beginning, when he started still very young, in 1986, with a photographic series centring on an unconventional overview of the body, it was possible to realise then, the attempt of experimenting the unusual possibilities of the used methods, and together there was the inspirational consideration of the image intended as a message, capable of reflecting the cultural trends still uncovered of our times. The multiplied body of Arena, gained though an overlapped of "negatives"; was diverting, even if marginally that process known as "artificial progress" of the physical human component. Following this, his research seemed to develop from physical identity to essential dimension of the individual, trailed with pending thoughts and disturbing sentences, which was previously mentioned by P. Magni and Pratesi, in "blue" (presentation of young Italian tendencies in 1998, next to Cineplex cinema). In this last video, he joins the images giving the spectator a feeling as we were reading in the character's mind, which melts like a dream. In the years to follow, he enriches his personality not only though unsure events concerning his career, with "OLTRE", but also with an installation realised in 1993 at Leonardi's Gallery, where hundred of lamps, hanging from the ceiling lighted up, bright the background evening, of a cloudy sky, an ironic game were once again artificial and nature join together inexplicably but always within a national and international site. From this cycle of exhibitions, promoted by Mirian. Cristaldi, at the beginning of 90's, using "art" as evocation, as well as with the experience from ACE group, Arena moved around a lot amongst Genoa, Turin, Milan and Rome, and outside the national boundaries in Germany, France Switzerland. Denmark. Certainly, his abilities of expressing himself throughout his images, nearly creating a shock on people, gave him the opportunity of selling himself quite well: an example is from his big picture from "still life for likewise people" (1998) that represents two hands holding a brain, cut across by a razor, a snaking process of lifestyle, that goes from the heart thought the stormy cannibal reality of our times, to bring us back to the individual indifference using a shocking event. Sandro Ricaldone  We will work with the visible colours of body Alive tonalities of skin, pale, redness, darkness and reds The red of blood. Blue-green of veins, blood containers The burned lands of liver, the yellow of kidneys, Whites and rare pale blue of eyes, browns of moles, the blacks of her eyes. The vivid black of her hair Lightness through the lines of powerful brown We will work with flesh inside and outside We will see And that will be the case, they will be warm colours That will be the case. The bile... What colour does the secretion of bile s have had? The adjective is acid... but the colour? ... but is the type of light and the quick move, which determine the temperature of the colour. We will shun heat! Gabriel Ventaglio  Nevertheless, his young age and the attention towards codes and expressive modalities, apparently far from formal tradition and social art, Francesco Arena isn't new to themes like religion. Remember ALTERITA'; an installation of 10 photos and videos, represented in the "POSE" exhibition, held in 1993, in the sacral monte di Varrallo's chapel, in that occasion, Arena's interest towards the sacral, shown throughout a series of photographic images, that reflected sacral ritual phases, lasted in time (Christening, Wedding, Holy Communion, Ordination, Extreme unction.) spaced out with the other images from publicities. Reaching in this way, a total analytical balance between Catholicism and consumer messages, just to underline the ability of interchanging. A similar behavioural attitude, an emotional detachment, supported by another strong, unusual component that origins from the artistically conduct towards the themes like "corporeity", often sensual, we can find it in ix station, "Jesus on the cross". The Sacral Heart of Jesus will become a Royal Heart, where nails will be stuck into it; other nails will be positioned on a mirror lighted up by torpid reddish lights, which enlarge the image. Linguistics codes in art, combined with religious traditions, represent and manipulate the usual publicity rules. It is not the case if the artist adds to the real heart, torment tools, with few little chocolate hearts wrapped up in aluminium paper. In this photo of brilliant colours, Arena releases a special and quite difficult message as if it was a "consumer" image, like the corporeity of Christ and the drastic, cruel moment of his crucifixion, adding to this symbol of sorrow and death an effect which combines to the religious iconography consolidated in the centuries, his codified representation through the mass media signs. His pictures travel on the same line as communication, with his reassuring range of icons, certainly the observer will be able to discover in the represented characters, beyond the first impression an emotional content surely deeper. Franco Ragazzi  Francesco Arena for years has been working in the photography and video thematic field. His research, firstly oriented toward the external, on the analysis and de-composition of the body, and its potential way (likewise Bodybuilding for example), it has slowly changed to an internal one, nearly introspective. In his works, the corporeality is tested like a borderline between internal and external, so it becomes, almost, a kind of neutral place: a place where the individual compares him to the external world reality. Recently Arena has returned to the photographic field and creates big images, which he calls "still life", but they are far away from the media tranquillity of this style. Strong colours define the balance between Shock, idolatry, and enunciating of social evil. In "Still life for lifelike people", the ambiguity of communication is debated-through a handling of linguistic art codes- in the choice of an advertising technique. In these photos, the artist spreeds like images of consumer, some messages anything but ephemeral and superficial. The dramatic metaphoric force of these extreme conditions of uneasiness, it is further stressed by illusion of a codified and familiar pattern like the advertising. What is important, it is "the cutting" and "the way" in which we cut. Really, we don't see as a whole, however we see "cut". It is our "way of cutting" that defines our perception of things. And, everybody has got his own means. Inevitably, we cut to define, to communicate, to understand and to synthesize. We cut to build ourselves. Arena cuts, he is suspended, aseptic by emotions. More then "to cut", his own way is an "cutting unevenly": a precision objective and "no-sentimental" definition. He cuts unevenly on the bodies, on sensations, on concepts; with opposite aim, he sublimes to the sublime. Whit a soft cynicism of cutting, he subjects visions, apparently away from opinion. He takes photographs of bodies, rather of contours, than flesh, matter and emotions: the bodies of image. The bodies that build themselves, the bodies dissolving, the bodies changing, in any case, the bodies of imagine. And then, the cut, gradually, goes inside, it goes inside the interior flesh, like a more interior look. He goes back, out of the things, the products and composes" Still life", big advertising and patined images, that don't contain some products, but "subjects". "Heavy" subjects, social subjects stopped by an objective anatomist. By a cataloguist that deranges into determine a relation of impertinence between "the container" and "the way". Just some impertinent images. Apparent paradoxes, but the paradoxes as such, are "litmus paper" and …they capture the thought. But, in Arena's work, "the result", the outcome, doesn't immediate, obvious yet, It is "mediate" from a time too, a reduced time, but time: his time. The time of his machines, the mental machines and the shot machines. Just one of the objectives it is to stop his time by his expositions, by his cut. Fragmentary documentary films breaking up in stopped dowels, beautiful already only too see because they are "mediated" in aesthetic; "loghi" and "luoghi" di tempo. "Logos" in meaning of word: time words. "Loghi" in meaning of brands: time brands. "Luoghi" in meaning of contemporaney time places: "luoghi di tempo". Gabriel Ventaglio  The "Andrea Ciani-Arte Contemporanea Gallery"(Piazza Scuole Pie 7/8), from Tuesday to Saturday and from h.16.00 to h.19.00, will receive as a guest, until 28th September, the personal " Luoghi di tempo" by Francesco Arena, genoese artist from a substantial curriculum, the expressive research of whose (visible on http://francescoarena.rules.it) ranges from photography to video-art, from installations to sculpture. On this occasion, for the first time, are shown about eighty polaroids (in original cm.9x7) that have been taken in the last ten years. The choice to dedicate an exhibition to this particular way, often considered "minor", it start to the artist's attention for the technique characteristics: unlike photos already well-known of the "Still life for lifelike people" series, that are more involved and arranged with lay-out and drawing, the polaroids are the result of rapid shots taken without to visualize clearly the subject. Because of inevitable immediacy and of speed conception, the images are warmer, more emotional. In Arena's opinion, the photos are misleading allegories, places,"loghi" and "logoi" of the paradoxal objectivity of an unreal reality. To invent a hypothetical world, to face the representation obstacles: this is the true creative instant, before the development gives origin to the handwork. I a sense, the Polaroid reduce the distance between thought and tangible product; it is an abstraction that is realized at the moment; a reified idea, almost an action painting. In the shown works, divided on three main installations, the body is the guiding principle of the research. The first group of shots, taken in 1990, proposes and opposes images of living bodies and statues, they have been photographed so that the camera movement or the subject movement it can underline the visual ambiguity of life and artifice. In the following series, the attention centres on the "Gestalt", on the self -representation of the subjects and, especially, on the gestural "trespassing" from a hypothetical and preconceived sexual identity. The last group is coherent with the research of the last years about the still life, above all it represents objects that are consecrated in chimeras of consume by use of a classic advertising iconography. Arena is painter too and it is very clear, the images are studied like pictures, they are academical, balanced, perfect, they have lights, backlights, spot for aimed lightining, pure and bright colours, carefully balanced spaces. At first sight, they are splendid and glamour images that ooze optimism and luxury. At second sight, the clear violence of the objects is in ambush: shocking images are strengthening by elegance of the photos that exasperates the emotional impact with the antinomyc contrast. It is a "in fieri" research expressed in the two videos shown too: " still life" in fixed shot, in the same style of the homonymous photos series. In these videos one element does or suffers a little movement contradicting the title. Arena uses the art like a picklock that unhinges the objective parameters and debates the relation between vision and seeing. Object and subject, "res " and poetic universe. All things are put on the same level, with zero setting of the vision emotivity. Because the images are pitiless self-portrait. "Gentlemen take polaroids/ and they fall in love/blow the life inside me," sings David Sylvian in "Gentlemen take polaroids". So, the objects are "alter ego" less involving and unprotected the soul, they can are unpacked by sight through following levels of reading if, like Arena says, or less consciously, all we package us. Valentina Caserta  The meaning and the reflection, that are understood in the Genovese artist's installation, are immediately taken in front of the three only copies of the video (only, because they are live filmed about the same subject); they are, respectively, two for a 60 min.time and one for 180 min. Arena formalizes in this way, those places of time that the show title hints, but it is not at all. Infact, the scene focalises the moving subject of a gold-fish that is inside a glass near to the fixed subject of a second glass containing some huge carpentry nails: other nails are rested on a reflecting surface, everything seems suspended in the air. It is pointed out the use overturned of the video image that replaces the flowing with the insincerity fixity of the photo; so, the only "story on becoming" is the smart evolutions of the goldfish. The remaining part of the installation realizes itself on the wall where eighty polaroids are shown, they are subdivided in five sequences, and they are load a ten years period. These photos tell a body "gestalt" and gesture expressiveness, both male and female. In the series "Emergency of beauty", the subjects are handling with nervousness some objects. Arena works out a shoting technique that aims to fade the image of a statue into a real body, he doesn't stop revealing the presumed truthfulness and the manifest ambiguity of the photographic way. Viana Conti  "Luoghi di tempo" is the title of Francesco Arena's personal,dressed in the" Andrea Ciani Arte Contemporanea" Gallery. The nimble shots, elegantly exposed, offer an overall view to the artist's photographic research around the body image. The detail isolation and the gesture is the finish line of a linguistic investigation where hands and mouths hint at more hard pornography: they are making opening out, they let themselves be deformed by blunt instruments, they are holding soft kitsch objects until swell up them. There is a direct expressive element in these bodies' pieces, (male and female) that are lonely in a dark background and that melt themselves in a red light so strong to enflate theirs contours. Narciso and Onan. The show is completed by a video that is moving up the artist's projects to come. It is a real "still life", partially in motion: a fish bowl and a crystal cup filled with nails become actors of a bright change that is made with the mastery of a consummate professional skill. Massimo Palazzi  The aesthetic new elaboration of the reality, filtered by the images bombing which we daily subject ourselves, it determines more often, an enlarged and specialized use, in the contemporaney art field, of technological "media" like photography and video. These instruments, in fact, offer to visual operator, the warranties of a neutral documentation and a wide range of expressive power for decode the complexity of the reality. It is just toward this experimental ambit that the Francesco Arena's research turns. Arena has chosen to work on the ambiguity of today's communication society and therefore, on the perceptive confusion through which we, often, interpret the indistinct flow of visual messages deriving from tv, magazines, art, and advertising. His research about our perceptive disorders is focalised on the body theme understood like a symbolic place of a collective obstacle to correctly interpret the external world and our own individual conscience. In the 80's photographic series, a fast comparison between naked bodies and sculptures it debates the our ability to discern between natural and artificial; in fact, the connatural stillness of the statue it becomes animated, but the natural movement of the bodies it becomes stiff in a plastic crystallization. Instead, in more new works, the body is analysed like place of exploration, of emotions and of sensations, leaving space to numerous interpretations. In both possibilities, the immediacy of Polaroid shot is really deranged by an elaborate dosage of the shot time and by a premeditate play of light. There is a distortion of intrinsic and expressive quality of the technical way in the video exhibited too. In this video the fixed shot would sham the frozen atmosphere of an advertising still life, but the perceptive deception is revealed in the margin of the image by the slow movement of a little goldfish inside a glass bowl. Matteo Fochessati   From: gventaglio@libero.it To: francesco.arena@libero.it Subject: voglia di pubblicare sulla tua pagina del catalogo esattamente ciò che vedi sotto compresi le intestazioni e-mail e senza firma Date: Sat, 7 Giu 2001 03:14:53 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 5.00.2615.200 Importance: Normal Suspension, stillness, extraneity, cooling, as if the objects and the our daily are turned over in a rarefied and surreal space-temporal dimension that loads them with sense and that re-words them in to a new life, very glamour, trend and packaged by the way of the glazed image; but it is only "way", it is only "methodology". In my photographic and video works, the time does not exist and the place is unknown, only our objects, our fetiches, our goods (which characterize us so well) are recognizable. Objects, fetiches, goods, they specify us in a game of continuous recalls to our private life, to our relationship, to our sensations; the vision is rarefied and extremely organized, it is guided to a "specific" where unlikely, we find ourselves by chance. The objects photographed and the elements used, are inclined to disperse the purely figurative characteristics and they move in a mental abstraction to which they try to enforce "discipline" by a sensorial "training" aimed at the user's imaginary. "Discipline" for a sanitary of thought and "training" for accustom ourselves to the new connections and the new look of the world…that becomes metaphor of another means, sometimes more worrying than their appareance; they alter the mean and invent new personal "signs". "…A borderline between inward appearance and outward appearance that becomes almost a kind a neutral space of individual comparison with external reality" The photographic image in Still Life series, or the videos in Luoghi di tempo series, with their look turned to the advertising, they hint some messages that might seem ephemeral and superficial because they handle the specific codes of art; the polaroids in body of evidence and emergency of beauty, with their technical and visual immediacy, they re-create " bodies of image", scanning apparently a-sentimental, that recompose themselves a whole by the value of the single fragments; so they become like free mental places, so they can form the letters to express a possible new association of sense "What is important, it is "the cutting" and "the way" in which we cut. Really, we don't see as a whole, however we see "cut". It is our "way of cutting" that defines our perception of things". p.s. Put the references to your text in inverted commas and ad just as you like, if you find errors or repetitions give you free hand kiss francis … The text is good; on the other hand I have always thought that the artists must communicate by themselves their work, others might explain or be impertinent, like me. But… yesterday you talked me about barbed wire, you were here to drawn it on the glass, yesterday you injured yourself too." Sanitary of thought "…we clean it, the thought! Before to put it on the market. And, I am here to "expand" tracks, I'm paginating the catalogue, I'm downloading your text, I'm paginating your photos, I'm writing to you, I'm writing to me, I'm answering and I'm reading me in inverted commas, I'm looking at myself, I'm looking at you and I'm not seeing, I have a monitor in front of me: it's strange, multimedial and in synchronous. It's a place, I'm making or I'm defining a "place"; it is a dimension formed by several elements, actions, thoughts…Place of synapses in run or in breathlessness I don't know it and I'm in a laughing mood! I decide to insert this untidy "dialogue", in pieces and in memories into your page. Between this acid green that seems not at all "good"…And a Tower of Babel, in any case readable and of a deep grey: a "singular" place, in any case of communication. But, where is this space? Is it in my brain or in your brain or in this monitor? And, the others, can they see it? And …do you remember-" what colours does the secretion of bile have got? It is acid. And the liver's yellows? We will go to see and we will scan warm", It is only a game of joints and of feedings, flahes, déjà vu and megavideogames, it is only a game, but…I'm made by flesh! And you too…that is the reason why yesterday you have injured yourself. Bye p.s. I'm only the result of a long line of events and…nourishments. Integral version of the text arranged for the show, the bold face portion, the italic portion and the mail heading, they wasn't published  Sandra Solimano (…) The correlation between Francesco Arena and Claudio Costa is a correlation of intellectual and personal knowledge too, because, their biographies shortly crossed and because, like many other Genoese artists in his generation, Francesco was fascinated by Costa and by his impossible research at the roots of the man and the human existence. When Costa realizes the conflict between heart and brain, he is almost at the end of his intellectual way (it's, suddenly, broken owing to death in 1995). The work is part of that it in regress which leads him to go over again the stages of hi way: the anthropology, the primitivism, the unrelenting time flowing that consumes and obliterates the memory of things and of people; the heart and the brain like engines, often in contrast between them, of the man's actions. Heart and brain are two human finds too or, like he prefers define them, are two containers, these containers is usually utilized by Arena in the "Still life" series, began in the 19997 and ongoing together other series, in accordance with a consolidated artist's routine. Like Costa, also Arena, beyond of the cold and anatomic terminology more congenial to him, he uses heart and brain like symbols or metonymies of the man. Here the agreements and the affinity of the contents stop them. As for the rest, Arena testifies him to the Costa's opposite side: there isn't matter in his work, if the image always very light of the photo and of the video, there isn't hope, as far as impossible; no more the long man's history and of his evolution like keystone of the enigma, but there is an absolute adhesion to the contemporaneity like only dimension of the existence. The Arena paradox is that, while he's declaring to use the photography to record the reality in aseptic way (at the most to focalise uneasiness condition and to point out it the audience) whereas he creates mental, surrealistic and visionary images that are built on the set by invisible stage effects, by a mix of incongruity and by tracks of the popular iconography (or of his memory). Reality Arena is perfectly aware of this paradox and he uses it to diffuse an ambiguous message that he disguises as a shape more glamour and smooth of the advertising photo: freezing contents, with vaguely sado-maso implications, in fact, here those hearts and brains, surrounded with barbed wire, stired up from pins, razor-blade, electrodes, wrapped in the transparent film to be preserved into the home's fridge and then consumed like appetizing dish from the Hannibal on duty; they are our hearts, our brains and his too. His hearts and his brains don't fight the Claudio Costa's romantic battle between faculty of reason and passion: they are only two men's pieces that represent the human being " in toto" and it's difficult to believe in his not will to give messages and in the possibility of reading the electrodes like an useful instruments for revivify an organ a little lazy. So, the mouths that with difficult open and close in the video "Respiri"(Luoghi di tempo), they cannot but return to the hard work physiological too, of the human life; not in a different way (it is astonish the analogy, not pursued) from the hard breathing of the sticked surfaces by Costa that, from the 70's, dilate and compress the canvas to the variations of the atmospheric moisture. There are agreements, more or less aware, sensitivities that, unintentionally, talk in the distance. Matteo Fochessati Inside the Francesco Arena's photographic and video research, the observation of the perceptive ambiguities grafted between different expressive fields, it is focalised, above all, on the today's mass media, that are, finally, represented from an explosive and rampant production of images. The main guiding principles of this analysis about the dysfunctions of the contemporary media system are two: in one way there is a global project of interventions turned to explore the relation between the photographic message and the linguistic typologies of the advertising, in other way, there is the work about the thematic of the body, which is assumed like symbolic expression of our structural hindrance to correctly explain the reality. In the first operative framework, Arena disposes a perceptive simulation in the handling the patterns of advertising representation that are used for transmit a series of messages not belonging to the consumerist context, but that, rather, hit, through a choice of images of strong visual impact, the piercing contradiction of the contemporary society. To this ambit of interest is referred the photographic series that the artist has chosen to compare in the exhibition, with a Claudio Costa's installation, in which there are some recurring iconographic themes in his research. Such representative definition comes back in other installation too, in which the concept of the linguistic transgression and of the optic deception is, mainly, about on the expressive properties of the technical way; in fact the fixed shooting of the camera stops the dichotomy between an apparent calm, which simulates the still life coldness, and an more or less frantic motion of organic nature (the facial expression or the slow swimming of a little goldfish into a bowl). In the works centralized on the body, in obvious correlation with the previous interventions described, it is further stressed the problem of the not-distinction between natural and artificial that is represented in this case, by a visual alteration that makes room to more interpretations about the individual and collective life sounded from the artist. (…)  My darling, It's wonder…I'm writing to you and I feel clearly our thoughts that are mixing together… the last day too, when I was talking to you about the colours of the mind and how it could be beautiful to define without words. It's strange, doesn't it? And yet, the words define, if there is not a significant, little by little, the meaning too is lost. For this reason the convention has into itself an undeniable property: it allows us the communication that in conformity with the standard of convention it can occur on various levels. But sometimes, also using the same code, the spoken language is different and so, often, the understanding feedback it could be difficult. The ideal it would be to fit up the access key to who is in front of us, it isn't always easy, possible and right, especially when which we want to communicate is poetry: soul nourishment "par excellence". Without doubt, the codes bewitch me and you and I are like so much… Inevitably, I cannot give up thinking to me like inhabitant of a tribe being out of history, and so I'm thinking to you like, he who captures and does own, with his technology, the things' and the people's soul… We must to over the code, but we mustn't forget it; simply, we should raise us above it. I like thinking that your work is tasting in a kind a state of ekstasi-superstitio, or rather separating, for a moment, the matter from the soul, the convention from communication. It has been so, in this my very personal vision, that I've felt the passion of the torment, of the research inside and outside, and then again inside you. You are, for me, an explorer of new worlds (or rather of extremely old, although images and invention of astonishing modernity that are so tied to a contemporary vision) and atavic places of the mind, of the heart, of the flesh. You know that, between your images-poetries, I prefer some of the "Still life for lifelike people" series. Brain, heart, flesh. Reason, emotion, sensation. More obscene than a nude, more patined than a fashion magazine, more winking than advertising. Ingenious oxymora. The flesh tormented by objects that are rending it; the red of the blood, dominant colour in the" Emergency of beauty" series too, they contain the terrible sweetness of pathos, of death, of Eros and they have got something of, unquestionably, holy. Something of nearest to magic of a wizard that acts a passage rite. This rite is celebrated, principally, for him and he permits the participation of an audience that, not always, is able to reach the orgasm of the knowledge. Over the significant. Inside the meaning. The holy that is meant like a priori category, unthinkable by reason but comprehensible by sensation. The holy like paradoxal category where the coincidentia oppositorum of tremendum et fascinans is realized. Tremendum, because it excites terrifying dismay but, fascinans because it fascinates, enraptures until the ekstasi and again, until the dismay. DIONISYAC. You put together in yourself these opposites. The categories of the irrationality that you capture, they defer to the primary needs: food, sex, water, fire, god; needs that make us to think toward a man being far away from the concept of culture (speaking in accordance with convention). But, the modern man, so imbued with appearance, so sophisticated, so refined to re-cover with superstructures the primary needs to make seem them like secondary and therefore cultural, he is only a confused animal that is wandering in the border of a limit line between nature and culture, between interior and exterior, holy and profane, appearance and essence…and he, often, cannot to find the answers inside himself or cannot to find, only, the energy to search in an another dimension that it could take him out from time and space. Hic et nunc, this is important, but the hic et nunc must be stopped in a continuous present made of still images on motion. I have seized your precious "words" I 'm keeping them into my vocabulary and I'll use them so, the essence will not missing. You are for me an extraordinary meeting…and I must say it…every day! Federica Pinna
The anatomy of melancholy
The idea of a possible teamwork between Francesco Arena And William Basinski has started to take shape by chance, a spring afternoon in a still desert beach. The first thing we have thought has been the concept of “circularity” from both shared in the last works. Sure, it’s a singular sharing, hazardous sometimes and sometimes in juxtaposition, but it’s undeniable the project of “system” that these works are carrying out. Federica Pinna
The anatomy of melancholy/FRANCESCO ARENA
“ Circular bodies” is an hypnotic and involving video that synthesises and completes the Arena’s last visual researches: with the background of the repetitive, broken up and minimal notes by Basinski, a body touches itself, it’s an anonymous body, almost asexual (then we discover in reality, it’s composed by several male and female subjects edited with ability in post production, but it’s unimportant) a body, we said, caresses itself, runs along itself, handles itself. The camera follows the gesture and suggests journey, movements, emotional ranges defining contours and playing morbidly with the ambiguity; the anatomic particulars mingle one another, hands look like vaginas, shadows hint at sexual organs, sometimes the body violate itself, it seems it’s penetrating itself : hands pushing the flesh…discomfort…then everything frees itself in a hedgehopping on the human landscape. The skin and its blemish, pores, hairs become the references of a map in balance between raw carnality and more unbridled oneirism; a kind of psycho-geographic journey on the innermost, family and, paradoxically, more removed territory. Sometimes the contours seem to define and seem to free themselves while they’re silhouetted against an acid background, but, apart from the evident visual deception of many false profiles, the ubiquitous chromatic deep red and passional, it intervenes at once to dissolve, to remelt, to remix and the journey resumes, always tender and violent. Elisabetta Rota |
