Francesco Arena
Four never-before-exhibited white bronze sculptures and a site-specific installation will be presented.
The white bronze sculptures, “divided and distanced”, are simple in form and of varying dimensions:
Block (city) has the same dimensions as a 25 Kg block of clay;
Tube (wall) is 4 meters in length;
Ball (house) is the size of a beach ball;
Slab (hand) is the same size as an A4 sheet of paper.
Each sculpture has been divided in half in different manner: the clay “slab” was divided by acting upon its thickness, the “ball” was sectioned into two parts, the “tube” was bent until breaking point and the “block” was divided by pulling its two extremities in the opposite directions.
The cut becomes a sculptural element and the two complementary parts of each work must be positioned at a precise distance which corresponds exactly to the proportions of the artist’s body, the space in which he lives, and the spatial and architectural context of the city hosting the exhibit.
Consequently, the two parts of the “slab” are exhibited at a distance of 20 cm from each other, maintaining the same distance that there is between the tip of the artist’s right hand thumb and the tip of his little finger; there are 20,95 meters between the two halves of the “ball” which corresponds precisely to the diagonal of the two extreme corners of the artist’s house; the two sections of the “tube” are divided by a wall, and the two parts of the “block” are positioned at a distance of 1 km in relation to the space of the city, corresponding to distance between Studio Trisorio and “Dolce Idea”, Gennaro Bottone’s chocolate shop located in via Gennaro Serra 78.
The installation entitled Passaggio lends its name to the title of the exhibit and has been specifically conceived for the gallery in dialogue with the history of this location which once housed carriages. The artist’s intercession re-dimensions the “passage” between the two areas of the gallery and brings into question the characteristic central perspective view. The space is, thus, literally re-modelled using classical sculptural materials such as clay.
