6 June 2021 brings the opening of a personal exhibition dedicated to Francesca Guffanti (Italy, 1962).

European cultural traditions, in particular during the era of the Counterreformation, also developed an almost political concept of imagery that has remained to this day in the genetic make-up of many cultures and, with the advent of commercial imagery, has become predominant as a signifier with regard to its meanings.

In her recent production, Francesca Guffanti, an accomplished painter, has pursued synthesis and the concept of imagery more than vain perfection of form for its own sake, where the painting itself becomes marginal compared to the poetry of its contents. This Italian artist forges a veritable aesthetic impact, in which the dialogue between gesture and representation acquires the character of a lofty interpretative commitment. For years, her approach has followed an Expressionist thread where it is not so much the calibre of painting that prevails, so much as her analytical and almost philosophical research: it’s as though her paintings were to become windows opening onto the world around us more than standalone thematic icons. So here we find the object dematerialising increasingly into the subject, while her characters and her subjects become the product of a metamorphic alchemy, almost a theatrical backdrop, something like an imaginative sublimation that makes them symbolic and eternal, leaving the visitor ample scope for a freely interpretative approach. The presence of the human figure is stripped of flesh and painted with minimal media, as though the thin, untidy matter were indicative of the truth of the human condition, while nature takes on the importance that looms over and outlives us.

Within this personal exhibition, the MACT/CACT has dedicated a special section, entitled CABINET: WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION, to the Swiss artist Katia Bassanini who died before her time (1969-2010). A child of the eighties, who was born in Ticino and lived in New York, this artist embodied issues concerning the relationships of force that abound in consumer societies, using a figurative and multimedia language, with a predominance of performance art that permeates her entire opus.

The works on show are plastics and on paper from 1996 to 2004.

Mario Casanova, 2021
Translation from Italian by Pete Kercher