PARIS.- Tornabuoni Art is presenting the first French solo show of young Italian artist Francesca Pasquali (b. 1980). She draws her inspiration from the observation of natural and organic shapes, which she transposes into complex and sophisticated installations, giving new life to plastic, industrial and recycled objects.

The show features Francesca Pasquali’s most iconic series such as her Straws, made of thousands of coloured drinking straws, cut to varying lengths and assembled to create three-dimensionality and depth. The exhibition also presents her absorbing Frappa shapes, created by assembling spirals of neoprene, and the Bristles series, works made of coloured plastic bristles commonly used in the industrial production of household brooms.

The evolving microscopic textures of the natural world are mirrored in the weaving of recycled plastic materials that shape the artist’s sculptural creations, which constantly change and move in relation to the spectator. From hard to soft, from alien to familiar, the materials interact with the visitors who move around, touch and enter them.

A keen observer of the materiality and transience of objects, Francesca Pasquali is influenced by the ideas of the Arte Povera movement to recycle everyday objects, such as drinking straws and elastic bands, cobweb dusters and broom bristles. Her labour-intensive creative process confers on these humble materials a new value and a second life as works of art.

The exhibition at Tornabuoni Art Paris displays around thirty works and one large-scale installation, Marazul, 2008, among the finest examples of the artist’s creative process. This site-specific sculptural work evokes nature and more specifically the sea, as the waves of foam rubber create an undulating interactive space in which viewers can sit and lie. The marine theme is also a way for the artist to critically suggest cultural intertwining, travels and flows of population in this changing environment. Made of superimposed coloured foam rubber waves, Marazul is a metaphorical net of welcome and meeting, but also a sculptural and iconic work that engages with the shape of the space it is exhibited in, becoming both mobile and strong like water, loaded with cultural energy like the people who cross it every day, looking for a new life. In this coming and going of rubbery blue material in Marazul, we find the creative process of the artist, woman and weaver, in an embrace of the viewer who is welcomed – perhaps overwhelmed – by the sensory experience of this work.

Francesca Pasquali was born in Bologna in 1980. She graduated from the Accademia delle Belle Arti of her hometown in 2006. She splits her time between Bologna and Brescia. During her training at the Academy, she had the opportunity to experiment with various artistic disciplines, including metalwork, engraving, photography and design.

Pasquali was profoundly influenced by the theories of Art Informel, particularly by two of her professors, R. Barilli and F. Arcangeli. This influence can be seen in more recent works by the artist, particularly in the vibrant, expressive power of the materials she uses.

Inspired by her study of the Arte Povera creations in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Pasquali re-works everyday objects and experiments with new media, characteristic of our times. She works with utilitarian objects to detatch them from their original function and interpret them from an aesthetic point of view.

Obvious references to Arte programmata can also be found in Pasquali’s work — a movement which she studied and whose investigations into perception, image coding and the possibility for a work of art to convey the idea of virtual movement she shares.

In Pasquali’s work, the sphere of nature becomes artificial, and vice versa. The artist becomes a kind of alchemist to discover the secrets of the relationship between matter and form. Her artworks and monumental installations invade our space and invite the viewer to participate and physically experience the work.

Francesca Pasquali’s works are in public collections and prestigious foundations such as: ALT Museum, Alzano Lombardo (Bergamo), Italy; Fondation Boghossian, Villa Empain, Brussels, Belgium; Ghisla Art Collection Foundation, Locarno, Switzerland; MAR Museo d’Arte della Città, Ravenna, Italy; MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, London, U.K.; Museo Diocesano, Brescia, Italy; Patrimonio Gruppo Unipol, Bologna and Thetis Foundation, Venice, Italy.