ROME.- Francesca Banchelli's solo exhibition, titled Fire Song, recently opened at ADA, in conjunction with Tuttacittà, the first Rome Gallery Weekend in Rome. The exhibition, which will be open until 15 July 2023, revolves around a cycle of new paintings. Francesca Banchelli's work investigates the concept of time through painting and performance, elaborating narratives in which constellations of events are arranged on a single plane and without any hierarchy, staging a reconciliation between the individual, the collective and the natural world.

According to a Sioux elder, the meaning of life is to address all the things we encounter with a song.

Chants are a form of primordial and intelligible dialogue, through which the encounter is found, a place where different parts mutate in order to understand each other. The closeness that is established can reconstitute a unique moment of exchange, an Event, between living and non-living beings, between human beings and their surroundings, between singularity and collectivity, in a state dedicated to the happening and mutual understanding.

The works in Fire Song express the vision of the encounter in events suspended between passages and flashes, wavering between the oneiric and the real, through places out of time. One is immersed in situations with no hierarchy, poised between the apocalypse and a peaceful instant at sunset, in a moment where the enchantment becomes a dream, but also a tangible experience.

Francesca Banchelli combines an intimate view of the world with the collective one, bringing out the most hidden self and then letting it disappear within a universal identity. The subjects of her works are filled with a vibrant and calm emotionality and connected by the propensity to trace, in an indefinite time span, residues of innocence and intelligence.

Francesca Banchelli's work investigates the concept of time through painting and performance, elaborating narratives in which constellations of events are organised on a single layer. Her imagery includes visions of coexistence between different living beings and natural objects, which hold time within them, or with inanimate objects, through which we understand ourselves.

Banchelli makes use of the concept of time as a means of finding the balance in the encounter between the self and the world, staging a reconciliation between the individual, the collective and the natural world.

Francesca Banchelli (Montevarchi, AR, IT, 1981) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence in 2007 and received her Master's degree in Fine Art from the Central Saint Martins in London in 2010.

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions and performance include: 2023 - ADA, Rome; Tenuta dello Scompiglio, Lucca, curated by Angel Moya Garcia. 2021 - Galleria Poggiali, Pietrasanta, curated by Sergio Risaliti. 2020 - Museo Novecento, Firenze, curated by Sergio Risaliti and Eva Francioli. 2019 - Centro Pecci, Prato, with André Lepecki, curated by Contemporanea2019. 2016 - MACBA Barcelona, with Pier Luigi Tazzi, curated by Carolina Ciuti. 2017 - Villa Romana, Florence, performance with Pier Luigi Tazzi. 2015 - Wilkinson Gallery, London, with Pier Luigi Tazzi. 2014 - TATE Modern, London, with Emiliano Zeleda. 2013 - 13th Istanbul Biennal, curated by Merve Kaptan, official side event.

Recent and upcoming group exhibitions and performance include: 2022 - BUILDING Gallery, Milan, curated by Giorgio Verzotti. 2021 - Monitor, Pereto (AQ), curated by Saverio Verini. 2016 - MANIFESTA 11, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, curated by Christian Jankowski. 2015 - Italian Embassy, Berlin, curated by Angelika Stepken; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, curated by Andrea Baldini. 2013 - Centrale Fies, Dro, Trento; Studio Voltaire with Gasworks, London. 2012 - S1Artspace, Sheffield, curated by Ben Rivers; New Capital, Chicago, curated by Chelsea Culp and Ben Foch .

She has been awarded the “Exhibit Program”, MIBACT Creatività Contemporanea in 2020, the “Step Beyond Grant Project, ECF - European Cultural Foundation” and the first prize “Portali dello Scompiglio”, Associazione Culturale Dello Scompiglio, Lucca, in 2013. She gained the “Deutsche Börse Residency Program” – Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2012.

ADA
Francesca Banchelli: Fire Song
May 12 | July 15, 2023