Artist: Luca Francesconi
Exhibition title: Eternal Digestion
Curated by: Ana Iwataki and Marion Vasseur Raluy
Venue: 67 Steps, Los Angeles, US
Date: May 20 – June 23, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and 67 Steps, Los Angeles
Note: Text by Luca Francesconi can be found here. Text by Ana Iwataki can be found here. Text by Marion Vasseur Raluy can be found here
“Vomiting is an act that falsifies the food chain, altering for a short time that disappearance into nothingness, and a new beginning, of which we ourselves are agents: like any other living being.”
LF
It is a popular misconception that in ancient Rome, a vomitorium was a space designated for the act of vomiting during lengthy and consequential feasts. The fantasy is a compelling one—debauchery of such magnitude that regular puke breaks were necessary to truly enjoy a proper meal.
A vomitorium is in fact a passage that allows large crowds to exit an amphitheater. A space for making space. Still, it’s a question of purging, of creating a void that actually always existed.
Eternal Digestion is Luca Francesconi’s first solo exhibition in the United States. A zine-reader on digestion, fermentation, vomit, and the eroticism of the above will accompany the exhibition.
Special thanks to Victor Miller, who made the wine that will also accompany the exhibition.
Luca Francesconi (b. 1979, Mantua, Italy) lives and works in Milan and Paris. His work takes as subject the fluid relationship between nature and culture—encompassing a spectrum that goes from land, agriculture and natural phenomenon to the making of art and exhibitions. Food and food systems, and our increasingly removed relationship to them, is a central concern. For Francesconi, “a man in a field is the beginning of a sculpture”. His exhibitions, which often include sculpture, installation, and writing, begin with a primal figure or phenomenon—the moon, a river, a grain, the field. Francesconi’s engagement with these phenomena, both aesthetic and intellectual, produce symbols that are evocative both of the real world functions they refer to and the poetic imaginary they incite.
He has exhibited widely, including at Jupiter Woods, London, UK (solo); Tunnel Tunnel, Lausanne, Switzerland (solo); Tonus, Paris, France (solo); Fluxia, Milan, Italy (solo); Rowing, London, UK ; American Academy in Rome, Italy; Arcadia Missa, London, UK; Shanaynay, Paris, France; MAXXI, Rome, Italy; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; among others.
Recent exhibitions organized by Ana Iwataki and Marion Vasseur Raluy include Windowlicker, Balice Hertling, Paris, France (co-curated with Julie Beaufils); Beloved in the Landscape, New Bretagne/Belle Air, Essen, Germany; Nothing Recedes Like Failure, Mortadelle, Arles, France; and Some of My Best Friends Are Germs, Doc, Paris, France. I will set a stage for you, an anthology of their Art Viewer Screen program was published by Hololoholo Books in April 2018.
