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Francesco De Bernardi at Café des Glaces

May 4, 2023

Artist: Francesco De Bernardi

Exhibition title: Your ease doesn’t simplify things / your ease is not making it easier

Curated by: Haydée Marin & Camille Besson

Venue: Café des Glaces, Tonnerre, France

Date: March 18 – June 3, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, and Café des Glaces

Il verso delle cose (The verse of things) by Federico Nicolao:

What’s the meaning of things? How one must perceive them? One looks for them first, identifies them then discovers their relationship with the human being: from with the most inert to the most used from the farthest to those which we use so much that we forget their presence and colors.

After having realized we are always in their presence and having found them again, we move away from them a little, which is enough to make us consider them like distinct from what we are and we are amazed by their characters banal and extraordinary at the same time.

At the heart of Francesco de Bernardi’s work: there’s a constant interrogation of the acuteness of our connection to things, on the way they are built organized or fabricated.

Reflecting a long Milanese story which combines art, object, scenography, narration, De Bernardi’s work has the ability to make us understand that feelings as well as things can break, join, paint, and fit.

What is an individual if not the complex interweaving according to which things and feelings coexist

Lazy but feverish, a simple energy is born from the ability to observe of the artist.

And without making do with the usual mechanisms of the world it surprises us, accompanies us, questions us, by mixing with their very functioning without hostility to any impropriety and sometimes in a marvelous fashion it’s open to surprise and non-fulfilment of a vast and incomprehensible which from birth to death, protects us or deceives us.

If the artist who introduces a sculpture chooses a this discretion to have it interpreted by space the reason is he wonders about the ability of space to let liven even magnify the feelings which gave birth to it and he asks himself from his first gesture what is the meaning of each presence.

Thus, at Café des Glaces in the small town of Tonnerre. (which as its name shows could have been created by Jupiter tempestuously) by outlining characters and figures and becoming imbued by the atmosphere of the valley of Pagus Tornodurensis, three sculptures and a series of drawings appear in the rooms of a small independent art center.

An old man, a dog, a mysterious observer…

Everything doesn’t revolve around melancholy, nevertheless the three characters dimly lit, are perceived by viewers as being resilient like imbued with dreams in the air lost momentarily or permanently.

Maybe that’s why the Dog bows and evokes the idea of affectionate domesticity, whereas the Old man is grumpy reflecting on his past and become sombre.

The sincere and genuine relationship which enable to welcome the future is over, with the innocence of the annual nearly guilty of stiring memories the ghost lights of distant future still seem present.

Clinging to his monocular lens, the Worried man wished he could correct the perspective, but it’s feared that his look will end once more by producing pure illusion: a perception which breaks up with reality , which induces a vision of the world conditioned or erroneous, a vision which we like for its softness with which we manage to create.

There’s however in De Bernadi’s work a grace of being which grows precisely in the distance between a viewpoint which is always deferred (remains hidden and must be sought) and the multiple attempts to find another one, more bearable satisfied with reality. Even going wrong when deciphering generates a vision and none of us knows what the worrying man, the dog and the old man watch all the time. While the characters live between gladness and misunderstanding juggling between the desire for an easier life and that of putting up with all its difficulties, the viewer may find the spell and the joy of a secret point of view.

Francesco De Bernardi, Your ease doesn’t simplify things / your ease is not making it easier, exhibition view, Café des Glaces, Tonnerre

Francesco De Bernardi, The dog Edi had when he was aboy (Gordon), 2023, wood, fabrics, foam, 125 x 180 x 37 cm; Untitled, 2023, 12 lamps, paint, electrical wires, variable dimensions

Francesco De Bernardi, Edi, 2023, wig, iron wire, clothes, 3D printing, wood, 148 x 121 x 121 cm; Untitled, 2023, 12 lamps, paint, electrical wires, variable dimensions

Francesco De Bernardi, Your ease doesn’t simplify things / your ease is not making it easier, exhibition view, Café des Glaces, Tonnerre

Francesco De Bernardi, All the insecurity of Edi, 2023, fabrics, foam, wood, camera lens, wood, 160 x 116 x 116 cm; Untitled, 2023, 12 lamps, paint, electrical wires, variable dimensions

Francesco De Bernardi, Stai Tranquillo, 2023, framework, graphite on paper, 44,5 x 33,5 x 4 cm; I Wept I Wept, 2023, framework, graphite and ink on paper, 44,5 x 33,5 x 4 cm

Francesco De Bernardi, Edi’s memory, 2023, framework, graphite on paper, 33,5 x 38 x 4 cm

Francesco De Bernardi, Your ease doesn’t simplify things / your ease is not making it easier, exhibition view, Café des Glaces, Tonnerre

Francesco De Bernardi, Thinking about what made you feel good is comforting 2, 2023, framework, graphite on paper, 49 x 40 x 4 cm; Sun Yueh Wen, 2022, wig, foam, fabrics, clothes, 3D printing, glasses, iron cable, 115 x 20 x 7 cm

Francesco De Bernardi, Thinking about what made you feel good is comforting 1, 2023, framework, ink on paper, 49 x 40 x 4 cm; Thinking about what made you feel good is comforting 2, 2023, framework, graphite on paper, 49 x 40 x 4 cm

Francesco De Bernardi, The most likely end, 2023, framework, ink on paper, 49 x 40 x 4 cm; Untitled, 2023, 12 lamps, paint, electrical wires, variable dimentions