PINO PASCALI AWARD 2024 – 26TH EDITION FRANCESCO ARENA

The commission is pleased to announce that the Italian artist Francesco Arena is the winner of the XXVI edition of the Pino Pascali Prize. For the first time in the history of the prize, the exhibition will be spread throughout the city of Polignano a Mare with a public art intervention curated by Bruna Roccasalva, Artistic Director of Fondazione Furla. The inauguration will take place on Saturday, July 6th, 2024, at 7 PM (ceremony in Largo Gelso).

The Pascali Prize Commission, chaired by Giuseppe Teofilo, artistic director of the Pascali Foundation, is composed of Francesco Guzzetti, art historian, and Nicoletta Lambertucci, curator at Tate Modern, and has justified the choice as follows:

The work of Francesco Arena achieves a perfect balance in the relationship between the artwork and the human being. As a true sculptor, the artist measures his works according to the parameters of relationship or connection they establish with the viewer. Arena’s approach is thus both humanistic and anthropological, capable of bringing the individual back to the center, but also and above all as an active part of an environment, in terms of spatial relationship and behavior. His ability to rethink the codes of sculpture through a practice that opens up to contaminations with different fields while remaining rooted in the sculptural tradition is an exemplary testimony of how this language can continuously renew itself. From performance to literature, the multiple crossovers that recur within his production dismantle those codes that see sculptural works as static propositions and project them into an open dimension, transforming sculpture itself into an experience.

The exhibition, titled Francesco Arena. 30 Swings, is realized in partnership with the 23rd edition of the Festival “Il Libro Possibile” (July 10-13 in Polignano a Mare and July 23-27 in Vieste) in synergy with the spirit of the artist’s research, which sublimates literary inspiration processes and data through sculptural plasticity, representing the anthropological dimensional measure of his work.

Francesco Arena (Torre Santa Susanna, Brindisi, Italy, 1978) lives and works in Cassano delle Murge, Bari, Italy. Francesco Arena has exhibited his works in numerous solo and group exhibitions, in public and private spaces. Among his solo exhibitions at important institutions, we can mention: Il fulmine governa ogni cosa, Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome (2023); Dieci minuti e un soffio, Palazzo Borromeo, Milan (2022); Onze mille cent quatre-vingt sept jours, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France (2013); Trittico 57, Museion, Bolzano, Italy (2012); Cratere, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands (2010). In 2013 he participated in the exhibition project “Vice Versa” for the Italian Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. In 2019 he was among the winners of the fifth edition of the Italian Council promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. Francesco Arena’s works are in the collections of the most prestigious national and international museums: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia; Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Museion, Bolzano; Madre – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples.

FRANCESCO ARENA. 30 SWINGS
Pino Pascali Prize – XXVI edition
Inauguration: July 6th, 2024, at 7 PM
Open to the public: July 6, 2024 – October 13, 2024
Polignano a Mare
Hours: The exhibition is accessible 24/7 throughout the entire city

Info: +39 080 4249534 fondazionepascali.it info@fondazionepascali.it / press@fondazionepascali.it