Francesco Carone Needs to Pick Up a Book
A quite unusual arrangement has been developed by curator Rubina Romanelli at the Museo del Novecento Firenze under the artistic direction of Sergio Risaliti. Working with Francesco Carone, they have realised his solo show “Cyclops” on two different floors of the museum with a dialogue between each other, showing mostly new works made specifically for the exhibition.
On the first floor que exposed the artwork titled Ciclope which takes two rooms of the museum that dialogue between each other. In the first room it’s seen a sculpture or installation that is composed by a green marble marble head supported by three sticks- like how a tripod supports a camera- and from the marble head a tube goes out and penetrates the wall. The tube is a sort of tunnel from which you can get close to the marble head and see through it. What you see are some reflections created by the iron golden shiny tube of a canvas that is situated on the second room where the tube continuous passing through the wall. Is like seeing through an altered telescope the image of a work of art. The painting that is reflected is called Storm and it is a work open to the public were each person can create another layer of the storm giving the work the idea that storms will always be there and are infinite while we life.
At first this work cannot communicate by itself and is difficult to appreciate it if people don’t give it a meaning. Putting aside these aspect it can open new possible thoughts regarding to the infinite meaning of storms and the way we see them, if we see the canvas directly we don’t understand that it is a storm. Either from the view through the tube we don’t understand what we are seeing. The aspect that makes speak the work is its title, Storm. These intangible way of representing the idea of storm opens to the public the possibility to make their own interpretation of the work. Storms are seen with bad connotations, with cold weather, with the inability of going out of the house, and in a more metaphorical way it is also associated with bad moments in live. But there are diverse ways of seeing it as there are diverse ways to literally see the work through the tube and interpret it. We can see the storm from a bad side, a sad side, or we either can see it through a good side. Through a side of changes, of new beginnings and new eras. Storms may take away the bad things and leave the good ones, or take the good things and make us stronger to continue by taking the good aspects of things that may be seen as bad. The storm is made by water that symbolises life, water gives live to the plants and trees and to all the living things. By this it’s seen that Carones Cyclope work may not talk by it self but may open new thoughts, new panoramas and is an open work where everybody can interpret it in a different way.
Francesco Carone walks a difficult road as he reflects upon the female universe in the second floor. Starting with the fact that he himself is not in fact female, one could not help but wonder just how genuine these reflections could be, surprisingly we cannot help but drink his cocktail with disappointment and fascination.
We are greeted with an iron fence with its bars welded and molded to read out “Les Lesbiennes”, the original and rejected title of the famous literary work Les Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire. Described as a critique to the commodification of eroticism by having the word “lesbians” inscribed into a physical barrier, one’s first instinct is to take the work instead as a critique to lesbians and females in general. How can lesbians be a barrier? Toxic masculinity have often perceived lesbians as the horrors of society, tolerated only to be sexualised for male pleasure through pornography while their real existence has been often taken into account as a lack of exposure to men’s penis, an overt realisation of Freud’s Penis Envy, and even often competition which bars men from reaching their women, declining their chances of ever copulating.
Perhaps Francesco wishes us to reflect into this with sarcasm, by taking a popular yet misleading notion and manifesting it with all of its misleading glory to create a sort of satire to show just how ridiculous this notion is, to the minds of the right people this would have been easily transmitted, and yet it may just be transmitting the very message it is making a laughing stock of into other minds. Invigorating their prejudices.
Three site-specific framed works and a pile of small circular cut leaves on a white pedestal is present in the adjoining room. This work is Menadi, a small pile of dry leaves cut to create a confetti. Like the fallen leaves, confetti represents a transient joyful moments. The Menadi — maenads, were nurses of Dionysus in Nysa that have been mythologised as “mad women”, their name literally translating as “raving ones”. Again, is Carone being blatantly misogynistic or is he making a laugh of misogyny to show how absurd it is to treat women in such a way?
The three framed works spell out “Aphrodite Anadiomene” and “La femme à la vague” pitting a vesica piscis (almond shape) titled “The Birth of Venus”, the universal and primordial sign of femininity and birth. All three works see the use of posidonia, an aquatic plant the artist has collected and dried.
They allude to famous feminist representations of females in art history, at least as feminist as they could have gotten in those times. Venus Anadyomene (Aphrodite Anadiomene) being one of the iconic representations of Aphrodite, was made famous in a much-admired painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in Pliny’s Natural History, with the anecdote that the great Apelles employed Campaspe, a mistress of Alexander the Great, for his model. While “La femme à la vague” (The Woman in the Waves) is an 1868 painting by Gustave Courbet, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The picture is notable for its realistic flesh tones and trace of underarm hair. It is this sentiment that perhaps Carone aims for. To create an homage to feminists and the brave women in his life. It’s a precarious journey, his head may be in the right place, yet his way of doing has yet to achieve the right output. He needs to perhaps pick up a copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir if he hasn’t already and be reminded of how satire can only work if it is used to criticise those in power. When you criticise the weak and turn them into a laughing stock, you are nothing but a worthless bully.
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Born in Siena in 1975, where he lives and works, Francesco Carone is mainly dedicated to sculpture and graphics, combining a conceptual approach with a narrative trend. He is the creator of several projects in progress, among which Tempozulu and TITOLO l’edito inedito, and together with Eugenia Vanni he directs the Museo D’Inverno in Siena, founded in 2016. For years she has been reflecting on the themes of transformation and the circularity of creative processes. His research starts with a personal reinterpretation of the universe that surrounds him, of myth, history and the practice of art. Considering beauty not as an aesthetic category but as a drift of wonder, he creates projects, books and works that coagulate around a theme or a dominant thought, where the evocative aspect of language is substantial.
Francesco Carone has taken part in important solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including: Gyeongg International Biennal, South Korea (2017); Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona (2017); Padiglione de l’Esprit Nouveau, Bologna (2017); Villa Romana, Florence (2016); Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno (2015); Galleria Civica di Modena (2014); Biennale del disegno di Rimini (2014); American Academy, Rome (2012); Luogo Pio della Pietà, Bergamo (2012); Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (2012); EX3 Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, Florence (2010); La Farnesina, Rome (2008); National Gallery of Modern Art of Mumbai (2007); Galleria Comunale d’arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (2004); Palazzodelle Papesse, Siena (2002, 1999).
