Francesco Carone. "Rendezvous des amis"

The glorious rooms in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico with their frescos painted by renowned masters of the technique, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, will be hosting a show of contemporary art staged by Siena artist Francesco Carone, who by means of a series of site-specific interventions in space develops a learned and sublime dialogue between images of the past and the gaze of the modern viewer, and between the artistic memory of the site, its meanings, and contemporary visual perception.

"Rendezvous des amis" is the title of the Francesco Carone personal show promoted by the City of Siena Cultural Affairs Office sponsored by Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and curated by Marinella Paderni – a title that evokes the idea of a meeting between old and new friends, an approach maneuver conducted on both sides that brings each into the orbit of the other (in scientific jargon "rendezvous" also means linkage) in which the artist juxtaposes his work against the creations of the master painters of the Siena tradition in the precise setting in which they left greatest memory of themselves and their art, as if intent of establishing with them a silent dialogue on the dialectics of viewing in historical and modern times.
The leitmotif beneath the entire show is the concept of collective semi-blindness that results in people looking at things without really seeing them, people already compromised by the pictorial overload that distinguishes our modern world. Insisting on emptying as part of the construction process and the idea of absence linked more to augmented rather than decreased visual perception, Francesco Carone has conceived of a large installation of sculpture that provides a new tool for seeing that helps view the marvelous frescoes in the Mappamondo Room with different eyes and from unprecedented angles.
In a play of appearances between the viewer and the viewed, the artist reflects on the different ways of perceiving the visible, the basis of the agreement between image and viewer, and the role of the latter suspended between seeing and believing.
The investigation is carried further by another three works on display in other rooms, where between the visibility and invisibility of things, Carone unveils the truth that every image bears inside itself by going beyond mere vision thanks to a refined skewing of the senses.

The works are presented in a catalogue in Italian and English with texts by critics Tom Morton and Marinella Paderni published by NERO.