The research of Francesco Arena is inspired by the political, religious and social events that have determined the course of Italian history and moulded collective memory. The project created for Peep-Hole focuses on Milan, which has long been tied to the artist’s work. In the national consciousness, more than any other place Milan represents the centre of class conflicts, armed struggles and the strategy of tension. The city witnessed events – the Piazza Fontana bombing, the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, the discovery of the hideout of the Red Brigades in Via Monte Nevoso, and the murder of Fausto and Iaio – so disruptive that they acquired a national dimension and became critical moments in the past 40 years of Italian history. Tracing the clues and coincidences that link these events, the artist underscores what proves to be the physical and temporal proximity of divergent and contrasting visions.

Two new works created specifically for the Peep-Hole gallery will be on display. Da 8 a 9 Senza Titolo (2011) embodies the distance between street numbers 8 and 9 in Via Monte Nevoso in Milan: the 8.80 metres that, in 1978, separated a key hideout of the Red Brigades (the Moro Memoirs were found here) from the home of Fausto Tinelli, the 18-year-old who was killed along with Lorenzo “Iaio” Iannucci for reasons that have never been clarified. In Arena’s work, this distance becomes a thin, suspended bronze body weighing the same as the artist. Transformed into a universal unit of measure, it unites two places in which events that affected the entire country unfolded and that are still obscure even today. The second work on show, Occhio destro occhio sinistro (2011), is composed of two marble slabs that are exactly the same size as those set up in Piazza Fontana to commemorate the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, which occurred in mysterious circumstances while he was being interrogated about the bombing of 12 December 1969. The first of the two original plaques, laid in the Seventies by Milanese students and democrats, bears the phrase “Giuseppe Pinelli, railway worker and anarchist, an innocent man killed”. The second, placed in 2006 by the Albertini administration, reads: “To Giuseppe Pinelli, railway worker and anarchist, an innocent man who died tragically”. Taking this inconsistency as his starting point, Arena carved only the conflicting phrases – “ucciso innocente” (innocent man killed) and “innocente morto tragicamente” (innocent man who died tragically) – on the plaques, placing them so they are at eye level. The difference of just a few words encapsulates the full distance separating two divergent political visions and the uncertainty over an event that has yet to be clarified.

Francesco Arena was born in 1978 in Torre Santa Susanna, Brindisi. He lives and works in Cassano delle Murge, Bari. His main solo exhibitions include Il peso del mio corpo in un blocco di pietra del peso di una barca, Art Statements, Art Basel (2010);  Cratere, De Vleeshal, Middelburg (2010); Teste, Fondazione Ermanno Casoli, Fabriano (2010); 18.900 metri su ardesia, Galleria Monitor, Rome (2009); 3,24 mq, Nomas Foundation, Rome (2008); Pallet sospeso su 7 raggi, Brown Project Space, Milan (2008); Impannellamento, Galleria Monitor, Rome (2006); Laboratorio, Galleria Monitor, Rome (2004). Group exhibitions include Pleure qui peut, rit qui veut, VIII Premio Furla per l’Arte, Palazzo Pepoli, Bologna (2011); SI, Sindrome Italiana, Magasin, Grenoble (2010); Les sculptures meurent aussi, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse (2010); La scultura italiana del XXI secolo, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (2010); Squares of Rome, Moca, Shanghai (2010); Soft Cell: dinamiche nello spazio in Italia, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (2008);  Dai tempo al tempo, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l’Arte, Guarene d’Alba, Cuneo (2008); Confini – Boundaries, Man, Nuoro (2006).