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until 14.04. | #1918ARTatBerlin | Esther Schipper currently shows an exhibition by the artist Francesco Gennari .
Esther Schipper is pleased to announce Greetings From the Moon, the first solo exhibition by Francesco Gennari with the gallery. For the Italian artist, each of his exhibitions represents a metaphysical landscape of his own sensibility and emotions, revealing his vision of the world, and in it. The artist, who often finds inspiration in his everyday life – his favorite garments, such as the particular model of a white shirt he wears every day, are subjects of his work – see in the observation of the ordinary the possibility of representing something universal.
In Greetings From the Moon, Gennari presents four sculptures organized in a constellation centered on a new iteration of his emblematic installation La degenerazione di Parsifal (Natività) / The Degeneration of Parsifal (Nativity). Designed for the first time in 2005 in a square format, the octagonal installation consists of eight sheets of stainless steel, held together by staples, enclosing approximately 80 kg of flour containing a number of butterfly eggs. Installed in the showroom, the brackets are opened, the panels carefully removed and placed on the floor around the initially flawless octagon of flour. Over time, the flour is ingrained in gravity and entropy and begins to disintegrate, reproducing on a smaller scale forces that also act in nature. Along with this process of disintegration, the eggs will hatch and possibly small butterflies will emerge. Gennari sees La degenerazione di Parsifal (Natività) as a total work of art, as a metaphor for life and death, in which the artist himself acts as a demiurge – as a creator and destroyer – who decides on the transformation and the becoming of all things.
Around La degenerazione di Parsifal (Natività), Gennari has placed three formally minimalist sculptures on the floor. Semper io / Always Me (2017) consists of two long metal rods strung together. Although made from the same alloy, both are gold plated with different shades of gold: yellow and lemon. An irregular circle of green Murano glass (Mi sento quasi … / I Almost Feel Like …, 2017), as well as a bronze cast of the artist’s favorite shirt (Come una farfalla / Like a Butterfly, 2018) complete the exhibition landscape, and scha a kind of ensemble of metaphorical self-portraits. As a central theme in Gennari’s work, the self-portraits of the artist sometimes refer to his physical nature, while others refer more to his mental state.
With Greetings From the Moon, Gennari addresses ideas of duality (Semper io) and emotional instability (Mi sento quasi …), as well as his desire to escape reality through the act of dreaming – by taking off his shirt at night, like one Butterfly, freeing himself from his cocoon (Come una farfalla), places himself at the center of a cosmogony created in his image.
Francesco Gennari was born in 1973 in Fano, Italy. He lives and works in Pesaro and Milan. The artist was awarded the ACACIA Prize for Contemporary Art in 2009.
Gennari’s artistic practice is based on minimal formal characteristics and a metaphysical approach. His work draws from a vocabulary of recurring shapes and different materials, both mineral and organic-Murano glass, bronze, gold, marble, as well as flour, butterflies, gin-which are not chosen because of their outward appearance, but because of their idiosyncrasies were. Its seemingly objective aspect contrasts with the artist’s attachment to the ideas of sensibility and poetry behind the experience of being in this world.
Selection of solo exhibitions: Transcript, Galerie Stadtpark, Krems (2016); Francesco Gennari, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Turin (2015); Francesco Gennari, Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2014); Picture this! Francesco Gennari, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2009), and Francesco Gennari, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Etienne Métropole, Saint-Etienne (2008).
Exhibition period: Friday, 16th March to Saturday, 14th April 2018
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Image caption: Francesco Gennari, La degenerazione di Parsifal (Natività) / The Degeneration of Parsifal (Nativity), 2017, Photo © Francesco Gennari
Exhibition Francesco Gennari – Esther Schipper – Contemporary Art Kunst in Berlin | ART at Berlin
