FRANCIS OFFMAN
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RESIDENCY: 21 JULY - 20 AUGUST 2025
EXHIBITION: 22 -29 AUGUST 2025
The works of Francis Offman (1987, Butare, Rwanda - lives and works in Bologna, Italy) consist of unmounted canvases with irregular contours. The paintings emerge from the melding of vivid, flat, solid-color sections with collaged zones of scraps of thin sheets, salvaged from bread wrappers or shoeboxes, which enter the composition like rips or wounds. On occasion, a realistic element emerges: a dry tree, a mountain, a portion of water, earth or sky ... Offman’s pieces are free compositions that imply fragile, understated references to a faraway world and its customs (including Rwanda, where the artist spent some of his childhood), a traumatic memory, and an uncertain identity; jagged, dynamic spaces that cannot give rise to an integral landscape.
- Text by Davide Ferri
Francis Offman's solo and group exhibitions include Economics of Painting, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK (2024); Notes from the Heart, La Società delle Api, Monaco, MC (2024); uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things at Tate Liverpool, part of the Liverpool Biennial, UK (2023); Italian Painting Today at Triennale Milano, Italy (2023); La Biblioteca del Mondo, Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2023); Quotidiana: Paesaggio, La Quadriennale di Roma (2022). He has an upcoming exhibition at Secession, Vienna (2025). His works are included in the collections of Frac Bretagne, Rennes, France; The Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologna, Italy; MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Rome, Italy; Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; The University of Warwick Art Collection, Coventry, UK; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US.



