15 settembre – 13 novembre 2016, Alba
Just as every year, starting from September, the Coro della Maddalena in Alba holds an exhibition of contemporary art, with the most prestigious names on the international artistic scene, promoted by the Ceretto family. Francesco Clemente is the sixth guest to make contemporary art coexist with the wonderful Baroque scenery of the Coro della Maddalena. Just like Kiki Smith, the artist involved in 2014, Francesco Clemente is returning to Alba, after embellishing the walls of the restaurant Piazza Duomo with one of his frescoes.
“After Omeros”, this is the name of the personal exhibition and it is composed of two installations and forty-one water colours, inspired by the epic poem Omeros, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature for the writer Derek Walcott.
“I became obsessed with Derek Walcott’s Omeros,” said Francesco Clemente, “which is the story of the shipwreck of History. The islands are a labyrinth where History loses its direction and all its grand designs, diminished by the vastness of the sea, they end up covered in rust, in infinity misted over by vain declarations, in the silver and gold of sunken treasures. What remains? The same vain things sung by Homer among the Greek islands three millennia ago: a love triangle, regrets for a long marriage, the yearning to go back to where you were born, diseases in old age, a silent dialogue with death. I have painted 41 water colours and made 2 sculptures in wood, clay, metal, marble and paint to celebrate the Caribbean, Omeros and Derek Walcott.”
