Memories of the future LUCA FRESCHI 30.03 - 05.05.23
"We know that the past, the present and the future are already, minutia by minutia, in the prophetic memory of God, in His eternity; the strange thing is that men can look, indefinitely, backward but not forward."
The Brodie Report. Jorge Luis Borges
The emanation of memories, the calm of oblivion, the scars of the past.
These three elements present in Luca Freschi's work generate an atmosphere of serene restlessness. We are faced with a staging where the different objects have been arranged with a purpose. In this scenario, time is suspended, the work allows the viewer to observe a microcosm.
Time, memory and transcendence are some of the issues that have most concerned human beings since the beginning of our days. Through ceramics and terracotta, Luca Freschi (Forlimpopoli, 1982) investigates these questions and establishes connections between the past, present and future.
In his works we find a great variety of elements: anatomical parts, body molds, pieces of his own creation, objects collected in containers...
With his creations he evokes mythology, ancient art and contemporary culture, to explore in a plastic and conceptual way the transience of life. His ability to merge iconography from different eras and cultures allows him to create works that transmit an everlasting message that appeals to intimacy and awakens emotions and memories.
Vanitas is his most recent series and a synthesis of all the previous ones. It refers to the artistic genre of the same name that became popular in Europe during the 17th century and is characterized by representing symbolic objects that allude to the transience of life and the inevitability of death.
In this series he mixes elements from religious iconography, ceramic fragments and complete figures. In them he plays a compositional game where chaos and harmony come together, reconciling the ideal with the intrinsic perfection of nature, and at the same time accentuating the need for self-improvement inherent to human beings.
Breviary series that, like literature, refers to a small set of ideas or an extract of something broader, they are a summary of previous works of greater complexity in which ceramics connect classicism and contemporaneity.
In this cycle of pop aesthetics, as in other of his works, Luca highlights the main objects and their symbolic load with elegance and determination, promoting dialogue between them.
The body constantly changes over time and time leaves unmistakable marks on the body. The Between series brings this dialectic to the fore: memories are altered with the passage of time and the only thing that remains are the traces of what once was.
The heads are made using molds. The purity of the surface and the hieraticism of the bandaged faces contrast with the internal part, where we find an explosion of color that is visible through the mirror. The mixture of techniques from different periods, in this case sculpture and dripping, - initiated in the 50s by the abstract expressionist Janet Sobel and extended by Jackson Pollock; accompanies Luca's poetics as they make up an object in which the formal aspects have been transcendental and are linked to different historical moments.
