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September 2-30, 2005 Reconstrucción en rojo Nuevas Obras site-specific installation
Galería Nacional, Centro Costarricense de Ciencia y Cultura, San José, Costa Rica, curated by Rolando Castellón
show installation and essay in catalogue by Silvia Bandini and Esther Biancotti
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press release
After her long experience in New York, another overseas solo exhibition for the Sienese artist, Franca Marini, realized this time with the participation of the Departmente of Contemporary Art, headed by Prof. E. Crispolti of the Università degli Studi di Siena.
As always, the artist looks into the meaning of her work and her relationship with the public creating exclusive works of art. A large work of art has lent its title to the exhibition, Reconstruction in red, a real installation realized on site featuring velvet paper and threads of coloured wool. These coloured threads, which remind us, among other things, of the ancient weaving traditions of the pre-Hispanic cultures, seem to be the real thread of the exhibition. They are utilized by the artist to bring together, sometimes literally sewing together, single parts, fragments that through the construction of this work re-create an original integrity; or else they unite points which are distant from each other surpassing the boundaries of the image to blend into the surrounding space. They become the protagonists of a way of doing that is not only material in nature and that aspires to be a creative gesture, the expression of a thought which is not conscious.
The supports, created by bringing together maps, allude to the fact that distance has been overcome, not only in a spatial sense but above all culturally and not merely as the outcome of a globalization that we have had to bear. The artist has taken on the very task of art which she sees as the creation of images which represent our innermost fantasy in its most authentic and profound state, as well as those irrational contents inherent to man and therefore universally perceivable and communicable.
Il Corriere di Siena, September 22 2005
Sienese Art Abroad. Franca Marini's Personal Exhibition in Costa Rica
by Donatella Coccoli
In the heart of Latin America, in Costa Rica, the Sienese artist Franca Marini, exhibiting in a solo show until September 30, has been facing a real challenge. Firstly she has conceived and created works for an unfamiliar audience, different from the Western cultural milieu, always her audience in the past, and then created "on the spot" in only a day and a half, the large 8 by 3.5 m. installation “Reconstruction in red”, which gives the exhibition its title, but perhaps more importantly, she has discovered a new means of representation. Flexible forms, a delicate weaving of woollen threads, unpredictable movement and play of light and shadow. And then routes on maps made unrecognizable by the intervention of colour and threads: a journey in space with no limits of language or nationality.
These are the characteristics of Franca Marini's current research: threads, to unite what was perhaps ripped apart, coloured in the manner of the fabrics of the indigenous peoples whose culture was devastated by the Western invaders, maps in the name of a universality of art with a depth beyond the trivial word that globalization has become.
“Reconstruction in red” the large work in velvet paper and woollen threads, conceived in Siena and then created in San Jose, not only brings to mind the spilled blood of the Native South American peoples over the centuries, but also a condensed re-reading of the tangles of figures in the murals of the various Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera - a stage set of a movement of thought that seeks to bridge voids and rifts.
Franca Marini, a painter who attended the Art Institute of Siena (where she now teaches, along with the "Siena Program" at the State University of New York College at Buffalo) and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, after ten years of living and exhibiting in New York City, is back on the American continent once again, but this time with a totally new sensibility and assurance. By invitation of the curator, artist Rolando Castellón, Marini exhibits in the prestigious Galería Nacional del Centro de Costa Rican Cencia y Culture. The exhibition, open until Sept. 30, also involved collaboration by the Chair of History of Contemporary Art at the University of Siena, Professor Enrico Crispolti - two graduate students, Silvia Bandini and Esther Biancotti have in fact been responsible for the critical text of the catalogue and the arrangment of the works.
In San José, the Sienese artist has enjoyed considerable cooperation from the director of Dunia Molina who has provided Franca Marini with staff to adapt the exhibition space to house the works, some of which are large (in addition to “Reconstruction in red”, also “Thinking / Doing”, 5 by 2.80 m.). In addition, in the capital of Costa Rica, the Sienese painter was a guest of the Italian ambassador Gioacchino C.Trizzino who has asked the artist to contribute work to the contemporary art collection the Italian embassy is creating in the Central American country.