Anna Franceschini
»Nothing is more mysterious. A fact that is well explained«, 2010
16mm film transferred to dvd, colour, mute, 11:45 min.
Realised with the support of the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten
Courtesy of the artist

February 05 – March 08, 2012

Invited by Alessandro Rabottini (Curator at Large, GAMeC Bergamo, Italy)

»Nothing is more mysterious. A fact that is well explained« (2010)

Anna Franceschini primarily works with film and video, deploying the moving image and our relationship with the cinematic language to scrutinize specific places as metaphors of the human condition. Her films and her video installations often consist of a slow and prolonged investigation of objects, spaces and activities: most of the times the camera is almost static, although occasionally limited movements are allowed, and then they recycle, as if the act of filming happened in a loop. For Franceschini the moving image is the space for a silent, meditative observation of reality: a space almost totally emptied of the human presence, where time becomes tangible. The artist herself talks about her work as a »melancholic investigation« into human existence, and explains her need to film »a world made by human, but without the people that conceal its true essence«.

»Nothing is more mysterious. A fact that is well explained« (2010) was shot at the Pianola Museum in Amsterdam and is the product of a strict set of rules and restrictions that the artist imposed herself while filming the two rooms that comprise that small institution. The work mainly consists of two sequences of shots that succeed a circular pattern: architectural and decorative details, pictures and statuettes follow one another in a delicate parade, slowly forming a kind of a silent and unpredictable storyboard. In this work, Anna Franceschini merges a certain concern for the very nature of the filmic medium with the tradition of the Dutch painting from the 16th century, and in so doing she brings together two different ways of connecting image and time, movement and death.

Text: Alessandro Rabottini

Anna Franceschini (*1979 in Pavia, Italy) lives and works in Amsterdam.