Luca Francesconi
Echo of the Moon
CRAC Alsace
15 June–16 September 2012
Centre rhénan d’art contemporain
18-rue du château, 68130 Altkirch
T +33 (0) 3 89 08 82 59
info [at] cracalsace.com
Musée Beurnier-Rossel
30 March–26 August 2012
8-Place St Martin, 25200 Montbeliard
T +33 (0) 3 81 99 23 72
musees [at] montbeliard.com
www.cracalsace.com
www.montbeliard.fr
The moon is the poetic, symbolic, and very real point of focus of the exhibitions Echo of the Moon. Offering the visitor an experience both metaphysical and aesthetic, Luca Francesconi presents a brand new group of three-dimensional works, spatial explorations, and physical and temporal interconnections. In exhibition rooms, lightning is thought in order to obtain various qualities of dimness from near undetectable to very pronounced, from transparency to darkness, and from Spring to late Summer light. In this way the viewer’s perception of the shows evolve according to the passing of time.
The artist’s installation materials—stones, shells, gourds, poppy flowers—are gleaned from the river Po and its surrounding countryside: kinds of ethnological vestiges attesting to Francesconi’s interest in contemporary folklore and its enduring traditions. Various traces and manifestations of the living world also make their appearance: slugs and shells people both rooms and the artist’s imagination as he lays bare their physical and symbolic nature and their strange beauty.
Another matrix composed of artifacts—glass or bronze objects—from early cultures and current popular manifestations is on shows alongside black metal, marble, or crystal sculptures: in the Francesconi canon, nature and culture meet in a quest for an originary world.
The moon’s echo here is the echo of two projects, in fact, united by their duality of transparency and opacity. While the show in Montbéliard is all about light, the exhibition at CRAC in Altkirch makes plain it is darkness that lies at its heart, presenting a series of opaque sculptures and objects in a shadowy gloom.
Luca Francesconi’s artist’s book Echo Of The Moon is jointly published by Kaleidoscope Press (Milan), CRAC Alsace, and the Musées de Montbéliard to mark his double exhibition at CRAC Alsace and the Musée Beurnier-Rossel. Echo Of The Moon includes a text by the artist and an essay by Sophie Kaplan, director of CRAC Alsace, and Aurélie Voltz, director of the Musées de Montbéliard. The artist’s works and ideas are documented with his own photographs: working documents that form a kind of index of the unusual objects, curiosities, and natural phenomena in which he finds inspiration.
Exhibition curators: Sophie Kaplan, director of the CRAC Alsace; Aurélie Voltz, director of the Musées de Montbéliard.
Schedules and opening times
CRAC Alsace:
Tue–Fri, 10–6pm; weekends, 2:30–7pm
Open on 14 July; Closed on 15 August
Free entrance; guided tour on request
Musée Beurnier-Rossel:
Daily except Tue, 10–12pm / 2–6pm
*Image above:
Luca Francesconi, Vases, 2012. Ceramics, dried plants. Photo credit: CRAC Alsace, 2012.
