DUC UN CUC AL CAP Francesca Llopis

Homm, 2003 B/W Photography on paper 50x50cm

THE ATLAS OF FRANCESCA LLOPIS
Isabel Olesti

Francesca was born in Barcelona, in the district of Poblenou, and from a very young age (this was the fifties) her father took her to the bread oven factory which he designed himself. Thus we discover her passion for machines, the industrial ovens, the smell of iron, the noise of the quays. She started at the Escola Eina under the tutelage of Ràfols-Casamada. She wanted to study industrial design, but finally chose another branch.

She went to Warsaw and began painting ports, but found herself in the midst of a coup d’état. The tanks rolled onto the streets and the city was in chaos, but she managed to get a ticket to Paris. Shortly afterwards she went to London and rented a studio. There she prepared her exhibition for the Maeght Gallery in Barcelona. An art collector from New York saw the exhibition and asked her to paint the dome of his house. She spent six months there, and when she finished she had no intentions of returning to Barcelona and started washing dishes to pay for a studio. In her free time she went to the central library in Fifth Avenue, where she discovered the world of labyrinths and cavities and decided to look for them in Egypt, Yemen, Crete... In Crocodilopolis, for example, she found only a sign with an arrow pointing to the original location of the Egyptian labyrinth, already consumed by the desert.

Francesca continued her journey to Rome thanks to a scholarship. She undertook a training course in France and went on until Hamburg and later Iceland. All of this materialised in her drawings; she later experimented with photography and video, which she discovered in her own house, recording neighbours who she did not know at all.

(…) It is a long journey that began in 1981 and at present ends in Barcelona. A great atlas where the maps become canvasses.

Fragment from El atlas de Francesca Llopis, Isabel Olesti.
Crónica: La Crónica, El País, 28-06-2006

http://www.francescallopis.com

01_etcetera.flv
14'59" 27'8Mb Etcètera Direction and edition Francesca Llopis / Voices Lydia Lunch and Francesca Llopis / Piano Lydia Lunch / 2004

02_hommm.flv
4'45" 6'5Mb Hommm Direction Francesca Llopis / Sound Barbara Held / 2005

03_udolania.flv
4'32" 6'3Mb Udolània (Howland) Direction Francesca Llopis / Voice Jaume Sisa / 2005

04_nimir_nipai.flv
4'26" 6'3Mb Ni miratge ni paisatge (Nor mirage nor landscape) Direction Francesca Llopis / 2006

05_pensaments.flv
13'39" 23'8Mb Pensaments (Thoughts) Direction Francesca Llopis / Edition Adolf Alcaniz / 2002

06_duc_uncuc_alcap.flv
6'05" 9'7Mb Duc un cuc al cap (I carry a worn on my head) Direction Francesca Llopis / 2006