Francesca Leone | MAGAZZINO

Si può illuminare un cielo melmoso e nero?
curated by Danilo Eccher
16 Sep 2020 – 24 Oct 2020

First solo show by Francesca Leone at the gallery.

The title, taken form L’Irreparable by Charles Baudelaire, suggests the main theme of the exhibition developing around the large-scale installation that will occupy the main gallery space. Si può illuminare un cielo melmoso e nero? ? (Can one illuminate a dark and miry sky?) is an assumption of disorientation, suggesting the lack of clear landmarks and points of reference. In her series Carte, Francesca Leone precisely works on this absence and on a universe tied by opposites; Francesca Leone intervenes on a series of reclaimed metal sheets, through the application of layers of paint following a traditional approach, obtaining the restoration of a memory that seems to be already written in the found objects. This operation returns a light but robust painting, dense with references and stratifications, not only material.

For the exhibition at Magazzino, Francesca Leone has realized an installation that will entirely pervade the main gallery space. The ceiling subtracts the traditional view of painting and its natural vertical dimension while transforming it into a dark sky that people can look up to. The iron sheets, deformed by their own memory and subsequent intervention, become soft, light surfaces, over which the artist writes a page that time seems to have omitted.

Francesca Leone was born in Rome in 1964, and lives and works between Rome and Miami. His works have been exhibited, among others, at the Capitoline Museums (2007), at the Loggiato di San Bartolomeo in Palermo (2008), Palazzo Venezia, Rome (2008) and Castel dell’Ovo, Naples (2009); also in 2009 he exhibited at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMOMA) in Moscow and received the honor of Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts. He participated in the Venice Biennale in 2011 (in the Italian Pavilion) and in 2013 (Pavilion of the Republica de Cuba). In 2014, he had solo exhibitions at the MAC in Santiago de Chile, at the MACBA in Buenos Aires and at the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, in addition to that at the PAN – Palazzo delle Arti in Naples. In recent years, he has had solo exhibitions at the Milan Triennale (2015), MACRO in Rome (2017), Real Albergo dei Poveri in Palermo and Palacio de Gaviria in Madrid (2018).

MAGAZZINO D’ARTE MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA
Via dei Prefetti, 17
Rome