Si può illuminare un cielo melmoso e nero?

Magazzino is pleased to open its new exhibition season with the first solo show by Francesca Leone at the gallery. The exhibition, curated by Danilo Eccher and titled Si può illuminare un cielo melmoso e nero?, will open on Wednesday September 16th, 2020 and will be on view until October 24th, 2020.

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; the artist 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, the artist 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.