22th March – 10th April 2025
Opening Saturday 22th March 2025, h 6.00 pm

The double solo exhibition “SUB-LIMEN – Beyond the threshold of seeing” by Andrea Chiarantini and Kiki Franceschi opens on Saturday 22 March 2025 at 6:00 pm at the Galleria Immaginaria in Florence. 

Of the various artistic experiences that Andrea Chiarantini and Kiki Franceschi have in common, including drawings, sculptures and models, the two formed the artistic movement AXTEV, an acronym for Art for Visible Traces of Existence, which sums up the belief that art always contains traces of human experience and memory.

Chiarantini’s works draw inspiration from an artistic turning point in the 1980s, when his approach to abstraction became more vivid: empty polygons intersect with each other, creating gaps in the material, organizing themselves in a free space without perspective order. The bright and vibrant color is an integral part of the work. Alongside these, the series of “totems”, where the charm of the engraved signs refers to interpretations of Etruscan writing, an abstract and symbolic representation of human existence.

They are accompanied by the unusual assemblages of Kiki Franceschi: the symbols of the foot and the hands are images that have always accompanied human culture, from the footprints in prehistoric caves, to Islamic amulets, from the symbolic gestures of blessing or the simple and more common handshake, to the symbolism that accompanies the feet, like slaves kissing the feet of their masters, to the liturgical ritual of foot washing… Kiki Franceschi’s objet trouvé thus acquires a new meaning, rusty irons, materials found in second-hand markets or on the street or in the woods or on the seashore, acquire a sense, a message in their meaning.