FRANCESCO CLEMENTE

It follows that Clemente harnesses historical precedents to convey his contemporary reflections—as seen in his new work in fresco. The artist’s engagement with this ancient medium is informed by his early life in his native Naples, where decorative Greco-Roman and Italian wall paintings appeared throughout the city’s architecture and in the nearby fabled ruins of Pompeii. Utilising four traditional fresco pigments—terre verte, ochre, sienna, and umber—Clemente renders portraits that explore self and longing. ‘The Clemente subject is prototypically the self; the divided self, the twinned self, the self caught in the very instant of a shift in identity or a shift in perception or perspective,’ Henry Geldzahler observed. A series of tonal earth-green self-portraits find Clemente considering his identity—both as an artist and a human being, posed with a series of historical, transcultural masks. In other paintings, a horse subsumes the composition, hosting riders that further delve into explorations of personhood; ‘All horses are Trojan horses,’ the artist has quipped with a smile. Elsewhere, vibrant multicolored frescoes feature expressions of eros: nectar drips from a honeycomb heart into open mouths; figures make love amidst lotus petals; and a nymphic Daphne resists Apollo, seen through the gap of a keyhole.

For Clemente, the act of being represents a powerful subject, a malleable and transformative state through which critical questions can be pursued. Signifying fluidity, watercolor has long functioned for Clemente as an important means to stage these explorations. He has said, ‘The goal of my work is to remind the viewer of the necessity to be fluid, to be in a constant state of transformation.’ Beginning in the 1970s, Clemente worked in small-format watercolour, which suited his nomadic lifestyle and travels in India. In more recent years, Clemente has embarked on large-scale watercolour paintings, first with his series A History of the Heart in Three Rainbows (2009). In the exhibition at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, the watercolors on view will measure two and three meters horizontally, vividly conveying the artist’s meditations on selfhood through veils and bleeds of aqueous.

Created during the warm and lush summer months, Clemente’s representations in oil of amorous love and the erotic impulse are intimate yet universal, addressing physical and emotional connection. His earthen, pared-down palette emphasises metallic hues of gold and silver, while also referencing the pictorial traditions of the Italian trecento and Renaissance—the dry greys of Giotto and the cool greens of Fra Angelico. The paintings are populated with figurative iconography, including that of angels, and resonant themes of spirituality and sexuality. In Scissors (2024), an angel is nestled in the close embrace of another who has clipped their wings. Net (2024) presents intertwined forms tumbling with gravity in webbed suspension, while Cloud (2024) reveals two figures kissing, uplifted in the composition by an expansive, white tulle skirt. With Summer Love in the Fall, Clemente renders luminous visions that reflect on the bodily quality of desire and desire’s promise of transcendence.