FRANCESCO ARENA-contemporary artist

FRANCESCO ARENA was born and raised in Genoa where he still lives and works. Compared to many other “colleagues” he made a quite brave choice of being based there, a choice which not only means love and tightness to his city, but also optimism and hope for a cultural developement of the city itself. His creative photography “iter” dates back in 1986. Even the early black and white shots are looking different from his current productions, the research about body and its ambiguities as one of his predominant themes, is definitely clear at one glance. During mid eighties he started an intensive expositive activity which led him to the main Italian photographic galleries as well as a massive co-operation with Ken Damy. In between 1989 and 1991 very significant steps on his expressive growth, as passage from photographic bidimensionality to a more involved and complete work of art’s visions (including space dimension, use of objects, videos and various materials) were completed. During this period the first installation entitled “Neogrigio” took place, followed by “Interazioni” and “Porzioni Modulari”.
Always in these years there was the first Francesco Arena’s “team-work” sharing in co-operation with “Arte come evocazione”, a group discovered by Claudio Costa and Miriam Cristaldi which realized some artistic and multimedia events in alternative spaces bounded to territory’s culture and rural archaeology. The sharing in collective projects was one of the main themes of Arena’s artistic growth, a disregarded side but very common during the 90’s when he was co-founder and also the most active member of ACE a group who operated in Italy and abroad from 1992 until 1997/98. In 1996 he resumed an own subjective research, sanctioned by “Autobiografica” where the renewed interest in corporeality, introspective analysis about communicative and interpersonal mechanisms melted into a reflecting work which somehow opened the new productive artist’s course. “Still life for lifelike people” glamorous project characterized by glazed big sized photos, realized by using the more refined techniques of the advertising’s shots.
Someway provocative and explicit in their contents act to visualize the so called popular imaginary used in diffusing “hard” concepts: strong images defining a violent, embarrassing and vaguely repulsive carnality, conceptual and in the meantime fetish sceneries that marked one of the higher points of Arena’s production.
The set studied and created for the still life has been used by the author’s last video series which decree an abandonment of the screen play to privilege a fixed shot on a series of objects where the only dynamic and temporal discarding is given by an iteractive movement of a single subject in motion. By example, in “Luoghi di tempo LDT “ there are some golden fishes (or some worms, or a mouth) to define the rhythm of a motionless action, claustrophobic, boring or hypnotic, in any case, thoughtful in its surrealistic dimension. In “Respiri”, a same series’ variant, are displayed some female mouths breathing soundlessly in front of the camera to decree a replacement between physicity and the iconic abstraction of its representation: without sound, the protagonists are gasping like fishes in the bowls. A clear metaphor of an anxious research of communication. Among the latest photographic works, strictly allied with “Circular bodies” clip, the Polaroid series “ Body of evidence” has been introduced. Serial and repetitive documentation of gestures belonging to some characters unlike for sex, age and physic presence. A subtle analysis also on the emotional variety of the expressiveness and of the perception- relation with its own bodies. “Emergency of beauty” features an ambiguous collection of Polaroid and photos in which neutral anatomical details as hands, mouths, eyes etc… becoming awkward metaphor of an hard explicit iconography.
A transgender game that doesn’t involve only the body’s wholeness, but slits and transforms the single parts, where the gender melts and overturns. Wedges of personal and original journeys around the body that Francesco Arena (professional photographer apart from artist) carries on with rigour and method since years.
“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) A body caresses, runs, handles itself. The camera follows gestures and suggests journeys, movements, emotional ranges defining contours and playing morbidly with ambiguity. Anatomic particulars are mingling one from another: hands looking like vaginas, shadows hint at sexual organs, sometimes the body seems to violate and penetrate itself: hands are sinking in flesh… discomfort… then everything frees itself in a hedgehopping on the human landscape. The skin becomes the reference 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 free themselves while they’re silhouetted against an acid foreground, but, apart from the evident visual deception of many false profiles, the ubiquitous chromatic passional deep red, intervenes once to dissolve, remelt, remix and the journey, resumes tender and violent. Definitely an emblematic work of the production by an artist who made of the physicity’s research a cornerstone of his production. [Elisabetta Rota, 2004, Genoa, Italy]
In 2004 Francesco Arena started a new big multimedia project called "CIRCULAR BODIES", including a video, a new photographic series / installation, and the "ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY" performance / event presented with the american musician / videomaker WILLIAM BASINSKI at the Contemporary Art Museum Villa Croce in Genoa, Italy. Same project was also presented at Arcadia, the New York residence of the Music and Media Laboratories of Basinski.
A video-catalogue with texts by Daniela Cascella, Federica Pinna, Elisabetta Rota (by HYPEstudio production in cooperation with MMLXII / 2062 musex international) is featuring this big project. Its presentation included a live performance / exhibition with William Basinski at the Museo d’arte contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa, Italy and photo / video installations at the following contemporary art galleries in Genoa, Italy :
- Archivio Caterina Gualco
- Andrea Ciani Arte Contemporanea
- Galleria Joice & Co.
- Passo Blu
- Rebecca Container Gallery
- Spazio Zebra Arte Contemporanea.
Arena M-eats Corpicrudi (AMC) is a concept born in late 2004 from a collaboration between FRANCESCO ARENA and CORPICRUDI, genoese team working on hybrid video-performance/photo-installation and music projects. The project includes 4 serial episodes featured in the various rooms of the “Samantha Stella’s house”, with a totally new and free use of supports from the visual, performative and sound languages. A different episode for each room of this ideal house with fixed and mobile video cameras from the reality shows’ format. A series of live performances featured in video images, or born from the interaction between the two languages. Each location becomes an installation where a few design elements are playing a particular aestethic balance contributing to the whole project style.
The CORPICRUDI team are proposing their bodies as objects, while FRANCESCO ARENA is interpreting them as subjects. Bodies, images, colours, all is contributing to the visual and emotional feeling of each room where Samantha Stella is living alone or with her friends. Multiple video and photo images are giving different suggestions, feelings, cuttings to the spectators. Electro music as the only verbal language thanks to the collaboration with MASS_PROD, sound designer
The four episodes Bathroom, Bedroom, Sitting Room and Dining room have been also exhibited at :
- Special event @ galleria Neon/ Campobase, Bologna, Italy
- Milano Flash Art Show 2005 (international contemporary art show)
- Special event @ galleria Guidi&schoen contemporary art, Broadside fashion store, Globus fashion store and Lebowski cafe’, Genoa, Italy
- Il bar dell’amore (collateral event to the performance festival by Marina Abramovic) @ Galleria Civica arte contemporanea, Trento, Italy
- Videominuto poptv 2005 (video festival) @ Centro di arte contemporanea L.Pecci, Prato; Pan Museo delle Arti di Napoli; Enzimi festival, Ostia, Roma.
- Solo exhibition @ Primo Piano Livingallery, Lecce, Italy
- Attitude video festival @ Cultural Centre Magaza, Bitola, Macedonia, by Luca Curci/Artexpo
- Videominutopoptv 2006, Centro per l’arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato
- PLASMA videogallery, Firenze, solo exhibition curated by Andrea Mi
- Wonderful, Natura Naturans 11, galleria LipanjePuntin, Trieste, by Maria Campitelli/Gruppo 78
- Temporary Identities, video art section at ANIGMA 3rd Novosibirsk International Festival of Digital Imaging, Animation and Videoart, @ NSAM Novoribirsk State Art Museum, Novoribirsk, Russia, by Luca Curci/Artexpo
- 1st t-rex short movie challenge 2006, short film contest, Berlin, Germany, Arena club, film kunst and b-ware.
The AMC FILM, featuring all the video episodes in a special 40 minutes multiscreens editing, was completed on November 2006 and exhibited at :
- Catodica 2006- international videoart festival, Trieste, Italy, Teatro Miela, galleria Lipanjepuntin Trieste, curated by Maria Campitelli
- Excursion performance festival 2006-Limerick, Ireland, Italian section curated by Nicola Angerame, Limerick city arts office
- ART CHANNEL satellite and web TV, France – On January 2007 the AMC FILM (Bathroom, Bedroom, Sitting Room and Dining Room) entered the fixed TV broadcast
- KITTEN FASHION WEEK, Los Angeles, Usa, The Standard Hotel Downtown LA, special event during Los Angeles Fall 2007 Fashion Week (March 2007)
- CLIENT WORLDWIDE TOUR 2007/2008.
2007/2008 FRANCESCO ARENA NEW PROJECTS :
FRANCESCO ARENA's present photographic research is focused on the contamination with the other media languages. Each production is now completely conceived with the presence of sound and video as carrying elements of the photo work.
- the brand new work-in-progress project called “The Motel Room/ FE-MALE”, a light-box /photo installation starring characters from the electro and contemporary music, performers and old style models;
- the international multimedia project called RESPIRI / BREATHS (for information, press and calendar of events, please check it out the first icon on my top friends).
DOCUMENTATION AND ARTWORKS IN PERMANENT COLLECTIONS :
- Ken Damy Museum of Contemporary Photography, Brescia, Italy
- Kunsthistorisches Institut for Italian Art (19th century), Firenze, Italy
- Museum of Contemporary Art Villa Croce, Genoa , Italy
- Collection of Polaroid Corporation, Boston, Usa
- Care Of, Cusano Milanino / Viafarini, Milan, Italy
- Quadrennial National Exhibition of Art, Rome, Italy
- The Museum of New Art (MONA), Detroit, USA
- GAM, Gallery of Modern Art in Genoa, Italy
[thanks to samantha stella for francesco arena myspace layout]
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