Inside the second tent, entitled Museum Tent, are a
series of ironic self-portraits of the artist, who reaches
outside the baroque frame, wielding, in one portrait, a
wand, in another, a genie's lamp. The artist is magician,
trickster, soothsayer as well as truth-sayer. If the first tent
attends to one's stance in relationship to truth, the third,
entitled Taking Refuge, is a meditation upon and place
for enhancing one's relationship to one's own self. Taking
Refuge is a lay Buddhist practice comprised of making
certain vows which express a mastery of the self; making a
commitment, above all, to freedom—which in Buddhism,
often means freedom from appetite. Clemente seems to
be claiming, in his tents, freedom from the restriction of
roots, of possessing a place or edifice.
Clemente is unafraid of thought, magic and ecstasy,
attributes banished from an art world bent on the
scorched earth of irony. Yet Clemente is no innocent;
he understands irony, deploying it liberally, even lavishly,
but he refuses to be parched by it. Like the salamander,
he survives his own passions, remaining intellectually as
well as artistically intact. H Lisa Zeiger
Francesco Clemente Tents
Blain|Southern
Potsdamer Straße 77–87
10785 Berlin
21 September 2013 – 9 November 2013
+49 (0)30 6449 3151 0
berlin@blainsouthern.com
HYLAND
