Luca Francesconi

1979, Mantua, Italy

Luca Francesconi lives and works between Mantua and Paris. His artistic research encompasses painting, installation and practices connected with popular culture, food, collective rituals and contemporary social dynamics.

His works combine symbols, decorative motifs, anthropological references and a strong sense of visual freedom, creating images often suspended between irony, spirituality and pop culture.

He has exhibited at major international institutions and events, including Palais de Tokyo, MAXXI, the Venice Biennale, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Artissima in Turin, where he won the illy Present Future Prize in 2009.

Polka immediately captures the viewer’s attention through its explosion of vivid orange and a central figure that appears simultaneously as a totem, a ritual costume and a symbolic presence.

The blue, red and white bands create an almost hypnotic geometry, while splashes, drips and black traces disrupt the apparent order of the image. Even the decorative border seems to belong to a popular visual tradition, suspended between ornament and sacred icon.

The work retains something festive yet ambiguous, like an ancient symbol whose precise meaning has been lost, but whose visual power can still be clearly perceived.