Statement

Francesca Polizzi: The Archaeology of the Sensible Between Matter and Memory

Francesca Polizzi (Palermo, 1988) develops a sculptural and conceptual practice that stands as a profound investigation into the resonances between natural matter, collective memory, and architectural structure. Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo and refined through international experiences—including a residency in Düsseldorf in 2018 at the Verein Düsseldorf-Palermo—the artist has consolidated a sculptural approach in which material is never mere ornament, but rather the vehicle of a “deep sensory dimension.”

Constructive Practice: Stratification and Transfer

At the core of Polizzi’s practice lies the control and transformation of organic materials—raw wool, wax, colophony, and brambles—assumed as relics of a remote origin. The process is rigorously diachronic: the artist intervenes in matter from its most primordial stages (shearing, washing, carding, felting), imprinting an action that is simultaneously rational control and preservation of the animal restlessness intrinsic to the fiber.

Within this dialectic emerges the Vitruvian concept of transfer, critically examined on the occasion of the exhibition In Antis (RizzutoGallery). Just as in classical architecture the tree trunk translates its structural function into the stone column, so Polizzi’s works enact a simultaneous passage between the organic nature of matter and the inorganic condition of constituted form. In works such as Lamentations 1 and Lamentations 2, cylindrical wool bodies are suspended from steel exostructures: here, the unstable porosity of the fiber engages in dialogue with the aseptic quality of metal, resolving into a vertical tension that lifts the object from everyday reality toward an “other” dimension.

Organic Architecture: From Muqarnas to the Fractal

An interest in space manifests through the recovery of historical architectural elements such as the muqarnas, the honeycomb-like ornament typical of Islamic architecture. Polizzi empties it of its decorative function in order to investigate its organic and fractal genesis. By producing these structures in wax or through the use of brambles and acacia thorns, the artist reconnects the architectural fragment to its natural root (the beehive), creating a “place of encounter” between the built and the living. Small niches and projecting volumes thus become apparitions of familiar forms whose origins have been lost—elements that wander in memory like lands once emerged and then disappeared.

Image and Echo: Persistence and Disappearance

Beyond sculptural three-dimensionality, Polizzi’s research extends to the surface of felt in cycles such as Regression and Distich. Here, repetition becomes a conceptual device: images printed onto layers of wool undergo processes of chromatic and material variation that lead to the erosion of the image itself. Between natural grey and absolute black, form—often profiles of buildings or architectural structures—emerges and vanishes, working upon the binary of presence and absence.

The work of Francesca Polizzi, now represented by RizzutoGallery, ultimately presents itself as a circular rite of emergence and immersion. Each work—whether monumental sculpture or delicately impressed felt—stands as a fleeting revelation: an image that, while “distant,” is perceived as intimately close, capable of crystallizing the moment in which matter becomes concept and concept becomes body.

Since her debut in 2014 she has shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Among them: Il Profumo delle Fiabe | Rosaspina, Museo Santa Maria della Scala, Siena (2022); Wir sind Tiere, Atelier Am Eck, Düsseldorf, Germany (2018); Die Grosse, Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (2021); Only the Restless Know How Difficult It Is To Survive the Storm and Not Be Able To Live without It, Palazzo Ziino, Palermo (2019).

She has been represented by RizzutoGallery since 2022.

She is based in Palermo and Düsseldorf.