Exhibitions, Italy, Roma, 30 October 2010
Exhibition of Francesco Melone
by Loris Schermi and Paola Donato
Muga+Merzebau Gallery
Via Giulia, 108 - Rome Italy
Opening Saturday, 30 October 2010
hours 7.00 PM
This exhibit will take you on a journey of personal recollection and collective memory, following an engrossing itinerary of irony and research.
Francesco Melone recuperates symbolic images from the popular culture of the Sixties and Seventies, and uses them as shreds of a not-too-long-ago past that may provide a key to understanding the present. Both in his comics and in his detailed portrait works, his outstanding drawing is consistently personal and recognizable. Using different techniques, he has built a romantic, but all the same absolutely ironic and at times hilariously so image of Italian society.
In the 1990s, personal experience was the source of Melone's refelection, as he chose the private as a starting point and explored its potential overtones of “privacy” and “deprivation”, or “expropriation”. Starting with the series “Guardando si impara” (“Learning by observation”), he leaped into the external world, and his reflection took the form of images of children taken out of the popular encyclopoedia for young learners I Quindici. These glossy and rarefied pictures are take on a sometimes languid, sometimes disturbing quality.
Melone's work repeatedly explores the boundaries between writing and painting, objects and pictures. In the early “Grafismi solidi” (“Solid Graphemes”) series, details of the drawings were substituted for with rubber elements. Later on, Melone produced portraits of little families in fabric and foam rubber, ironically highlighting the tiresome burden of supporting a family. Eventually, in the series “Trofei” (Trophys), the artist's critique became even more explicit, as images of horses, sheep and pigs were displayed hanging from domestic walls.
In the latest series, “Affioramenti” (“Surfacings”), the artist has turned to tridimensional techniques once again. As if barely emerging from the sea of memory, the figures are pressed onto relief elements wrapped with scraps old photoplay magazines, and chained together so as to give way to a an entire picture laboriusly reassembled. One can hardly help being charmed by these children from the past, or drawn to Melone's conception of sentiment as a bond of affection, and partly as childhood nostalgia. In his most recent work, memory itself seems to have melted and, as it were, dissolved into the corruptions of adulthood, only to be materialized again in the form of blank spaces and molten objects which become ambiguous symbols of sexuality.
All of Melone's work revolves around the cluster-themes of childhood, coming of age, and the family, or, more specifically, the socially constructed image of the family, which the media has traditionally interpreted as a reassuring safe haven. All the way from the Sixties to the current image of “Mulino Bianco” advertisements, dashing Daddie-in-a-suit-and-tie has been taking a quick look at the latest news in the paper before rushing out to work as children have gathered round the kitchen table to enjoy the breakfast prepared by an ever-cheerful Mum. But what lies behind this surface? What unspeakable things really unfold in the intimacy of the domestic fireplace? It is hardly casual that most violent crimes should take place within such a secluded little community, in such privileged conditions. Like so many little mafias, families protect and favour their members at the expense of outsiders, while at the same time disciplining, punishing and hiding insiders from view.
Melone's indictment is not final, but encourages a timely, thoughtful and nuanced reflection on such a complex and sometimes endangered social formation.
by Loris Schermi and Paola Donato
Muga+Merzebau Gallery
Via Giulia, 108 - Rome Italy
Opening Saturday, 30 October 2010
hours 7.00 PM
This exhibit will take you on a journey of personal recollection and collective memory, following an engrossing itinerary of irony and research.
Francesco Melone recuperates symbolic images from the popular culture of the Sixties and Seventies, and uses them as shreds of a not-too-long-ago past that may provide a key to understanding the present. Both in his comics and in his detailed portrait works, his outstanding drawing is consistently personal and recognizable. Using different techniques, he has built a romantic, but all the same absolutely ironic and at times hilariously so image of Italian society.
In the 1990s, personal experience was the source of Melone's refelection, as he chose the private as a starting point and explored its potential overtones of “privacy” and “deprivation”, or “expropriation”. Starting with the series “Guardando si impara” (“Learning by observation”), he leaped into the external world, and his reflection took the form of images of children taken out of the popular encyclopoedia for young learners I Quindici. These glossy and rarefied pictures are take on a sometimes languid, sometimes disturbing quality.
Melone's work repeatedly explores the boundaries between writing and painting, objects and pictures. In the early “Grafismi solidi” (“Solid Graphemes”) series, details of the drawings were substituted for with rubber elements. Later on, Melone produced portraits of little families in fabric and foam rubber, ironically highlighting the tiresome burden of supporting a family. Eventually, in the series “Trofei” (Trophys), the artist's critique became even more explicit, as images of horses, sheep and pigs were displayed hanging from domestic walls.
In the latest series, “Affioramenti” (“Surfacings”), the artist has turned to tridimensional techniques once again. As if barely emerging from the sea of memory, the figures are pressed onto relief elements wrapped with scraps old photoplay magazines, and chained together so as to give way to a an entire picture laboriusly reassembled. One can hardly help being charmed by these children from the past, or drawn to Melone's conception of sentiment as a bond of affection, and partly as childhood nostalgia. In his most recent work, memory itself seems to have melted and, as it were, dissolved into the corruptions of adulthood, only to be materialized again in the form of blank spaces and molten objects which become ambiguous symbols of sexuality.
All of Melone's work revolves around the cluster-themes of childhood, coming of age, and the family, or, more specifically, the socially constructed image of the family, which the media has traditionally interpreted as a reassuring safe haven. All the way from the Sixties to the current image of “Mulino Bianco” advertisements, dashing Daddie-in-a-suit-and-tie has been taking a quick look at the latest news in the paper before rushing out to work as children have gathered round the kitchen table to enjoy the breakfast prepared by an ever-cheerful Mum. But what lies behind this surface? What unspeakable things really unfold in the intimacy of the domestic fireplace? It is hardly casual that most violent crimes should take place within such a secluded little community, in such privileged conditions. Like so many little mafias, families protect and favour their members at the expense of outsiders, while at the same time disciplining, punishing and hiding insiders from view.
Melone's indictment is not final, but encourages a timely, thoughtful and nuanced reflection on such a complex and sometimes endangered social formation.
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