Momentum

“I am in Alghero in Sardinia looking out to sea from the ramparts. Alghero has a Balearic atmosphere (but moved 500 kilometres to the east from its natural site), where every week, low-cost flights bring in a large number of inquisitive visitors from around the world, but where there still floats the strong perfume of the Sardinian hinterland. A picturesque and pleasurable metaphor for contemporaneity: strong natural identity confronted by a sense of globalism which permeates everything. It reminds me, although the similarity with the Balearic Isles is coincidental, of Francesca Martí and the video installation she realized for the exhibition MATT DIVE GOLD in Rome in July 2009, a group show in which I also participated. I had the opportunity to study her work from close by. Francesca reveals a strong artistic identity (the result of contamination and citation, as it rightly should be) and she is able to make use of the opportunities and complexities offered by globalization. I’m not an art critic, but for me, Francesca manages to be a true, authentic “spacciatore di identità”, a dealer of identities. She does this with remarkable elegance and mysterious simplicity. In reality, it’s the true (and possibly only) reason to be an artist today.”

Antonio Riello, artist, Italy, July 2010

Fragments of bodies inhabit storerooms, galleries and museums. Fragments of skin inscribed with a story. It may be all we have left: the body. A body wherein lies our identity. Everything revolves around our body, which may or may not be divine, but is always human. The body is the first thing we notice, our calling card, the first impression. Thanks to the body we feel the endless range of sensations because the body is, undoubtedly, a limitless territory. The body is a volume on a plane, an object from which we can eliminate the soul and convert into matter, an object that is a reference to other concepts beyond the flesh itself. By eliminating the face, the gesture, the gaze, the body is merely an empty container.

Introduction to EXIT Magazine #42
The body as an object May-July, 2011