Autoritratto su menta (con camicia bianca), 2020

In the middle of the 1990s, at little over twenty years of age, Francesco Gennari wrote on a piece of paper “Io sono Francesco Gennari” (“I am Francesco Gennari”): almost banal in its obviousness, this statement of self-assertion is the way with which he presented himself to himself even before presenting himself to others, so as to undertake a path of inner investigation which has not yet come to a halt. As a result of this inward-looking gaze, his research consists of self-portraits which in different ways register his physical presence in the world just as much as the sensations and atmospheres perceived, without the body necessarily appearing in the work, thus claiming his independence in coming to terms with a codified genre of art history. [...]