FRANKO B

A GENIUS EXPERIMENTER

WITHIN THE BODY OF ART

There is an ongoing exhibition at the Pac in Milan, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, of Franko B, an Italian-English artist born in Milan the 27^th of January 1960 who, in the last several years, has become one of the most well-known representatives of the art which places the body, the physicality – colored, humiliated, imperturbable, impassive in the face of torment – in the place of art.

A performance which speaks through eyes, tattoos, black or red colored skeletons, stuffed animals, domesticated for a happier life to come, beyond death.

With Franko B we all become body-artists, as seen in the Nunnery of London the first days of October, where the naked bodies of spectators alternate on a swing, as if to remind us that the body is a game other than a gaze (which cannot be avoided), skin which cannot not be felt, muscles in movement, a tongue which speaks in a world and a modern ideology which the body, seemingly, wishes to forget, fragment, exalt, sacrifice. Franko B is an Aquarian but his Moon, Mercury, Mars and Saturn are in Capricorn.

Indeed Saturn dominates the lines of his theme, which nullifies aesthetics in an essentiality which remains impassive, perhaps even imperturbable, to the body of art.