One of the most interesting Italian artists of his generation, Francesco Simeti (Palermo, 1968 – lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) presents two seminal works (Rubble, 2007 and Curtain, 2017) that indicate the themes and methodologies of his atelier-exhibition, which will see its final phase in September.

In the gallery on the first floor Simeti presents two works: Rubble, 2007 and Curtain, 2017.

In Rubble, Francesco Simeti revisits ‘House of Cards’, the famous work by the American designers, Charles and Ray Eames. Originally developed in 1952, their project reflected the almost utopian idea that industrial design could make the world a better, more pleasant place. Simeti is interested in rethinking the structure of the game created by the Eames by altering their positive vision through the use of harsh images of wartime rubble, debris and wreckage.

Behind Rubble then lies the other work on display which testifies to the artist’s interest in fabric as a raw material and field of anthropological investigation and a terrain of contrasts.

The lush velvet panels of Curtain interweave histories of art from East and West, providing a compendium of painting, sculpture and photography. Curtain becomes a portal transporting the viewer to sculptures in Russia or the Trump Towers in India, amid flowers, foliage, mountains and clouds appropriated from Italian art history.

The scale of the depicted elements reverses the normal size at which they exist in the world. The artist reduces monuments and buildings and enlarges grass and flowers, pushing them outside the ornamental function which they are usually assigned.

Simeti’s first solo exhibition in an institution, the project invited the artist to formulate a reflection on his work, in parallel with the creation of an artist’s atelier.

In more than twenty years of research, Francesco Simeti’s work has been expressed through a multitude of expressive languages ranging from collage, wallpaper, installation, sculpture and video production. His vocation for the action of public space has seen him as the protagonist of specific projects in domestic spaces, fragments of cities and institutions of small and large scale, corroborating his ability to interpret space and its stories each time.

The title of the exhibition Come un limone lunare / che non riposa mai is therefore one of the most famous lines by Danilo Dolci, taken from the poetry collection Il limone lunare, published in 1970 – a sort of poetic declaration on the exercise of the human potential of the Italian sociologist and educator from whom, for various reasons, the project draws inspiration.

francescosimeti.com