Testa carbonara, the solo exhibition by Francesco Bocchini, opens at Studio Cenacchi on 5 May at 5 pm. The exhibition is curated by Beatrice Buscaroli.

The show, the second the gallery has dedicated to the Romagna-based artist, brings together recent works from his well-known series of “mechanisms”, presented both on the wall and on bases. These works actively involve the viewer, inviting interaction: by turning a small crank, parts of the artwork are set in motion, fulfilling Bocchini’s intention of giving life to the inanimate.

Also on display are refined and enigmatic installations made of recycled sheet metal, evoking fantastical vegetation, brambles, seeds and flowers. The exhibition concludes with several large-scale mixed-media works on paper — among the latest developments in Bocchini’s practice — where painting, collage and text bring the viewer closer to the artist’s imaginative universe.

As curator Beatrice Buscaroli writes:

“[…] Francesco Bocchini’s works belong to that category of visual operations in which ‘one chooses to assemble a set of disparate elements, establishing intimate and secret relationships among them’. In other words, it is not a ‘painting’ that reduces multiplicity to a system, but a ‘table’ that activates a device capable of dismantling and deconstructing the traditional order that binds objects, suggesting or stimulating a new constructive logic.”

And further:

“[…] the works incorporate visual displacements, including minute writings in mysterious scripts alongside small images — a found drawing, a fragment of a photograph — or unfold within a larger play of surfaces where colour, strong and direct, prevails. In the display cases, this play reaches a higher dimension, where it becomes difficult to distinguish presence from reality: the artist’s thought is guided by a powerful irony that seems to challenge both the viewer and the author himself, caught in a web of forced yet meaningful connections, all seeking to recover a sense of linear meaning that disrupts conventional logic.”

Francesco Bocchini
Testa carbonara
Curated by Beatrice Buscaroli

5 May > 27 June 2022

GALLERIA STUDIO CENACCHI
Via Santo Stefano 63
40125 Bologna

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday–Saturday: 4.30–7.30 pm
Monday: by appointment
Sunday: closed