Diego Marcon: Franti, Fuori!

During his six-months residency at Careof, Diego Marcon responded to the Performing Archive call and endeavored into an erratic journey through the Careof video archive. Franti, Fuori! is the exhibition that concludes his experience.

The archive has revealed gradually, disclosing its many folds. Diego Marcon has followed the visual traces left by artists who contributed to the history of Italian experimental movie making almost 40 years ago, and those who, later, further participated into the evolution of that language. This was not solely an intimate encounter with a material – in some cases, unknown to the artist, in others, still a partner – but rather to absorb and then abandon it in favor of a more personal speculative operation. Letting something detach from its background in order to make it emerge on a surface mostly made by celluloid, glues, inks, scratches.

Franti does not have a body, or a face. It is rather a character, tough and sad (Edmondo De Amicis), whose vice or virtue takes its shape “out of place” and “off a field”. Four movies thought as one cerebral hemisphere, four collapses, four impulses, painted on microscopic centimeters of reddish film (Untitled– Head falling 01; 02; 04; 05, 2015) constitute the very heart of the exhibition.

Other elements make as a satellite to the movies, by contributing to the succession of visual and sound references.

An outdoor sculpture, similar to a garden gnome, yet in extra-large format, points out the time-space dimension of a setting we are invited to move into without signs, maps, compasses, constellations.

“This exhibition is expressively dedicated to the children in elementary schools, those between nine and thirteen years old, and could be titled: One year old exhibition, made by a 3rd grade school kid from an Italian municipal school. Now, look at this show, kids: I hope it will make you happy and bring you some good”.