FRANCESCO CLEMENTE | UNLIMITED

ART BASEL UNLIMITED
Booth U59
September 20–26, 2021
Messe Basel

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE
The Senses (Sight, Taste and Hearing), 2000
Wool tapestry
Three parts, each: 93 ¾ x 91 13⁄16 inches (238.2 x 233.2 cm)
Courtesy of Francesco Clemente Studio

Part of Unlimited, Francesco Clemente’s The Senses (Sight, Taste and Hearing) (2000), is a monumental tapestry in three parts that evidences the artist’s continued engagement with contemporary Indian visual culture. The present work is the result of a decade-long collaboration with billboard painters in Chennai, its imagery first appearing in a series of gouaches (now in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) which Clemente subsequently had woven into a tapestry. Here, the panels present, respectively, the sense of sight, taste, and hearing. Outsized body parts are interpolated with human figures that partake in sensuous and fantastical activities: a caressing couple recline in a large eye, a pregnant woman is wedged in an ear, and a comically small head protrudes from the tip of a tongue. The triptych displays Clemente’s unique ability to use images to form unorthodox mythologies, ceremoniously open to interpretation.