Our trash
Museo La Triennale - Milano —
2015
08/10 - 18/10
When i got to know Francesca Leone, before seeing her artworks nd visiting her studio i was immediately struck by her gaze, by those intelligent and observing eyes that reflect an extremely sensitive and profound soul, all-examining and analyzing with extreme precision. Francesca is an artist of few words and great thoughts; her shyness and her silences are a precious feature. Francesca truly talks continuously to herself elaborating everything she perceives.
Her art is the true expression of herself, where an – often unforgiving – analysis of mankind, its behaviors and its surrounding habitat triumphs.
Her studio, in a Rome surrounded by trees, far from the chaotic and noisy city we all know, is a fantastic thought laboratory, a pace where she collects materials that she transforms into artworks, unique for their beauty, poetry and introspection.
Francesca Leone, after a cycle of prestigious exhibitions in international institutions such as the Museum of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Santiago del Chile and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires (MACBA) as well as other important solo shows in 2014, returns to Italy with this brand new exhibition at the Triennale in Milan.
Our Trash is the fourth cycle in Francesca Leone’s work.
The first one is the portraits of people that have made the history of humanity, from Gandhi to Kennedy, from the Pope to Ben Gurion.
The second, Flussi immobili (Still Flows) concentrates on the expression of people blasted with a jet of water that erases their features and distorts their image. The soul comes out in all its compelling need to breathe.
The third is the one of Corpo e terra (Body and earth) where the focus is shifted from the face to the body, and the landscape gives both to the female body in a true metamorphosis process.
The fourth cycle is the current one in which Francesca Leone carries on, in a more and more original way, using different materials, often recycled. From dirt to plastic, from tree branches covered in tar to heavy glues. The theme is the juxtaposition of nature’s beauty to the vile abominations perpetrated against the environment, devastated by trash.
The new series Our Trash has brought to the Triennale in Milan an exhibition of artistic, cultural and social value, totally new and of utmost importance. The show brings the viewer to reflect on the indiscriminate use that mankind makes of the environment.
This last work, composed of 18 aluminum grating pieces, composing a huge installation, a large platform on which the viewer can walk on and observe, building a true interaction with the artwork. The gratings spew out the evidence of their passage: cigarette butts, plastic, pebbles, paper, keys, trash and coins are the elements of daily stories and a suspended time. Francesca’s work has been produced with the unwitting contribution of hundreds of people that, with disrespectful behavior, have littered the streets with trash and objects;
This artwork proposes a reflection on mankind’s indiscriminate action against the environment, it takes part in th vital debate on the pressing necessity to safeguard the environment and expresses,
a strong and significant aesthetic character.
Francesca shows us how polite recycling of polluting materials can give birth to something that satisfies the eye and stimulates thought. Her work teaches us to behave differently to preserve nature and ourselves. Mankind cannot exist without nature, it is our duty to respect it, there are many ways to communicate this concept and Francesca Leone does it exemplarily with art.
