Solo exhibition of Franco Scalese artist, curated by Conchi Alvarez.  21st  of April until 9th of June

It is the first solo exhibition of the Swiss artist Franco Scalese in STOA Gallery, although he already participated in 2015 in a collective exhibition, “Vertices of the Passion” (“Vértices de la Pasión”), also curated by Conchi Álvarez. Even then you could see his two artistic facets, small sculptures that we could call “sculptural objects”, pieces where the juxtaposition of elements becomes exquisite and elegant art, and a magnificent painting-installation. In this occasion we will see mostly the paintings. As before, they are paintings-collages, thirteen small and medium format works of art, of a resounding expressionism. Juxtaposed to them, as formal and stylistically are completely different, we have the sculptures; seven “sculptural objects”, made in resin. The majority of the works have been designed and executed expressly for this exhibition in STOA, and all have as their main thread the gold leaf in the form of particles that cover all the surfaces.
“Memories of Gold” is an expressionist narrative on a universal and timeless theme, the memory, and at the same time personal, the remembrance, the most subjective experiences. Throughout the show the perennial ambivalence between the beautiful and gentle memories and the bitter, dark and mournful memories arises. And the works belong to one or the other universe, which is that of the artist himself, a personality in which his Italian, Mediterranean, and Catholic origin, and his Zurique formation and experience, of a strong Germanic and Calvinistic component, converge.
All the sculptures describe  a glance to the past from the watchtower of a joyful and nostalgic remembrance, they are golden memories, elegant objects in which old photographs are immersed in a transparent and golden viscosity to remind us what Jorge Manrique said, “… any time in the past was better”, because every frozen, premeditated and posed moment always shows the best, only a part, which we want to teach and, at the same time, the one we want to believe, which we cling to feel that there is that kind and lovely part in our history. Franco Scalese recalls the almost legends and stories that his grandmother told him and, once apprehended, internalized, forming part of his innermost self, as a second skin, emerge in his art in that magical ritual of mixing elements and, as a great demiurge, achieving elegant and enigmatic pieces. They are works that attract by its old flavor and that sensation of “déjà vu” that provoke in us the old photographs.
The paintings show us the other side, the most German Expressionism, intensity in the feelings and sensations that border pure tear. They are paintings-collages in which those old photographs are mutilated and torn, drowned in the middle of a suffocating pictorial density. Here the gold leaf particles lose their subtlety and wander around the surface like malicious rain of gold. Sometimes it seems that Franco maintains a struggle, primitive and intimate, to overcome the worst nightmares, then appear flowery brushstrokes and naïf touches that can not overcome the restlessness that the work causes. Intimate works, but so universal, that we can admire them and feel them as our own.