Flatbed

In an allusion to the mechanism formerly used by film projection cameras at the times of celluloid, René Francisco uses the columns of the hall as axes on which a large drawing of several metres in length unfolds.Flatbebis thus installed as a sort of “film” that travels along the itinerary of the artist, or rather, along the forking path that leads in multiple directions and ways of doing and feeling, in a myriad of both factual and conceptual solutions to philosophical and socio-cultural issues. Just like in an autobiographical account, the artist’s successive creative stages emerge with notable emphasis on the procedural aspects. Rather than the goal itself, he is interested in the process leading up to it, as well as in those mechanisms that drive thinking, whether in the construction of ideas, the architecture of a methodology or the development of a project. The key element of the piece is drawing, whose far-reaching stylistic register establishes a dialogue between lineal mechanical drawing and a more free and expressive form. Sketches of paintings, installation outlines, and notes with short and complex texts bring up old and new tropes: the repair shop, wells, massive demonstrations, forbidden books, the Tubosutra series, as well as concepts such as the masses and their surroundings, the individual and the collective, the Critical Path Method, and the entropy of the cities, among others that recurrently appear in Rene’s work. Flatbed is a moment of synthesis, a common space where the multiple facets of the same personality converge in full harmony.