The 23 November in Jesi, the artist Renzo Francabandera presents Archeology of the present, an exhibition that invites the public to reflect on collective memory and the way in which it is reinterpreted and reconstructed in the present. Francabandera explores the intersection between archeology and contemporaneity, staging an artistic operation that rewrites time and recomposes history.
At the heart of his work there is a gesture of recovery: Francabandera collects abandoned postcards, faded relics and forgotten objects, materials imbued with memory that time has forgotten and made obsolete. Through a process of visual manipulation that combines drawing, collage and graphite, the artist follows the instinct of the hand, letting herself be guided by an unconscious composition that draws on that childish and unaware part of herself. This instinctive act transforms the practice of retouching into an almost ritual experience, where primitive manual skills become the vehicle of a creative and free rediscovery, shaping new narrative worlds with the immediacy of the gesture.
With visual interventions that blend imagination and matter, the artist transforms these fragments into new narratives. memory, far from being a static concept, it becomes a field of continuous negotiation, a territory in which memories are rewritten and meanings are stratified, intertwining between real and imaginary.
Mara Predicatori – curator
The exhibition project
The archeology of the present deals with studying the material traces of contemporary society: analyzes objects, the structures and landscapes that are part of today's daily life or that have recently been "rejected".
This personal exhibition by Renzo Francabandera hosted in the exhibition venue of Palazzo Bisaccioni in Jesi with the patronage of the Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi, was born from the artist's most recent creative suggestions.
In recent years Francabandera has collected abandoned postcards, photo albums found among paper waste, shreds of posters, objects recovered from post-flood evictions. In some cases he superimposed his graphic-pictorial practice on these discoveries to create new spaces of the imagination, fantastic environments, stories and events imagined from a perspective that is often no longer anthropocentric.
The protagonists of this narrative are therefore the environments, emotional, real and imagined, which mix in these creations to dialogue with the visitor on what the meaning of memory is today. Giving value and meaning back to abandoned objects found by the artist in different urban contexts, Francabandera follows up with a stratigraphic-emotional excavation, which is based on the analysis of the finds, which are then reassembled to create landscapes, events that are the fruit of the artist's imagination, but which often start from real experiences and experiences.
“Archaeology of the present represents for me a dynamic and constantly evolving field of investigation, which wants to contribute to providing food for thought on how we act on our sensitivity, on how we preserve memory and how we experience nostalgia in our time."
The Works
The exhibition is made up of two creative nuclei:
- POSTERS FOR AN ARCHEOLOGY OF THE PRESENT: they are works of pictorial inspiration. Made in 2024 by the artist they bring the present of experience into dialogue, personal and collective, with the recent past and beyond. The works are made of poor material, paper tablecloths, pieces of posters recovered by the artist and amalgamated with pictorial technique, to create invented landscapes, that knead the present, perfect past and remote past.
- DISCOVERIES: inside the structure there is a large object installation which is based on two creative nuclei: the postcards, made between 2021 and the 2022, exhibited in various exhibitions in Italy, from Bologna to La Spezia. Some of these works have become in projected format, scenography of the show Anima Mundi, directed by Monica Felloni, produced by the Teatro Stabile of Catania, which features artists with and without disabilities.You dig in the mud is a group of works born after the recent floods in Emilia Romagna, as a recovery of what was left by the citizens after having emptied the cellars invaded by mud.
L'Artista
Performer, painter and scholar of contemporary artistic languages, lives and works in Bologna.
He is actively involved in his creative practice with live painting and body painting and creates illustrations and covers for publishing. Known for its historic habit, as a critic of the performing arts, to create live drawings during shows and performances, he has exhibited his theatrical drawings in prestigious venues such as Ca' Giustinian for the Biennale Teatro in Venice, the PAN and the Maschio Angioino of Naples, the Palazzo dei Priori in Volterra, the Piccolo Teatro and the Officine Ansaldo in Milan and with his theatrical drawings he was on display in Vicenza at Palazzo Thiene in August 2024.
His research outside theatrical spaces, in recent years, led the artist to investigate the abandonment of personal memory within the urban landscape, prompting him to recompose, between real and imaginary, new pieces of “nobody's memory” by reusing “rejected” or abandoned paper materials: photo, posters, postcards, diary
Palazzo Fieschi in Genoa, the Dialma Ruggiero in La Spezia at the Risorgimento Museum and Palazzo d'Accursio in Bologna, up to the spaces of the archaeological area of Cortona, these are some of the exhibition venues where his works have been exhibited.
He holds workshops and training projects on contemporary languages and performance art throughout Italy.
Professor of Languages of Art and Digital Media at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, he also taught Aesthetics of Movement and Body Languages at the University of Turin. He writes for numerous newspapers and cultural magazines (Hysterio, e PACwww.paneacquaculture.net among others) and has numerous publications on the performing arts to his credit.
He collaborated for the entertainment section with the cities of Cagliari and Siena for the candidacy as European Capital of Culture 2019 and numerous European projects dedicated to the performing arts.
Archeology of the present – An exhibition by Renzo Francabandera
Typology: contemporary art exhibition
Place: Bisaccioni Palace, You did
With the patronage of Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi
Curator: Mara Preachers
Date:
Inauguration 23 November 2024, ore 17:00;
Opening: dal 23 November to 9 December 2024
Hours 9:30-13.00 e 15:30 -19:30
Sundays and holidays included
