Francesca Magro Ergonomic Bodies

by Matteo Rancan, 2012

(The following text is an extract of the original critical text)

In Francesca Magro’s painting, the human body has a predominant role, her research, anyway, is not aimed to represent the body beauty, but to understand the possible relations that the body, the human being, is able to establish with other (natural and artificial) beings or with the (real or virtual) environment. Concepts related to Biology, Pychoanalysis, Ergonomy, Cybernetics, Medicine sciences and to disciplines such as Engineering or Bioengineering, the Theatre and the Industrial Design result therefore to be a fundamental aid to this purpose, becoming a sort of artistic and intellectual nutriment.
The human body, just like a machine, is investigated through its decomposition in order to know its interior mechanisms, its organs, its synapses and skeletal structures, or better it is read as group of pieces to assemble in order to obtain a finished product: a humanoid, generated by assembling through industrial production processes, fluctuating within indefinite rooms, determinated by color fields.
Represented Humanoids and dimensions are disquiting, as corresponding to the actuality: in fact what appears is not always corresponding to the truth; thruths may be numerous just like the answers. There are several examples about this: let’s think about the plastic surgery, able to modify, on the bases of the surgeon’s taste and/or of the patient’s aspirations, the external aspect of a person and about the consequent social and psychological implications; about the genetic engineering which is able to transform the DNA of any animal of vegetable being in order to produce, like an industrial process, new individuals; about doping to intervene on atlethic performances illicitly...
This painter’s work, where technics and thought live together at the same level, is undoubtedly complex, and it inevitably provokes difficult reactions and questions. Among these, the most immediate one is; is there hope?
It is not Francesca Magro’s task giving us an answer, her painting alerts us about what is happening so rapidly to be worrying.

Busto Arsizio, giugno 2012