Arena's art investigates often neglected historical, political and social events of the recent past and reinterprets them through sculptures and installations characterised by synthetic and metaphorical forms. A distinctive element of his practice is the use of personal anthropometric data - such as weight, height, distance of the eyes from the ground - that make the narrative of history tangible. His research is based on the use of a minimal and conceptual language, where essential forms become tools to reconstruct and rework historical elements.
Starting from a philological research, often linked to episodes of Italian history, literature and philosophy, he translates his works into spatial structures, with precise volumes and measurements, with a strong visual and emotional impact. Arena explores the past through sculpture and installation, using materials that are simple but dense with meaning, such as bronze, marble, iron and wood that acquire symbolic value in the process of reflection on collective memory.

The exhibition takes place in a flat located in the heart of the historic centre of Taranto, in the Palazzo Magnini in viale Virgilio 1, a space that will soon be transformed from a private to a public space. The title Frattempo recalls that interval of time that expresses the idea of something happening while something else is taking place. To free from oblivion and the category of the aside this segment of time usually trapped in a parenthetical dimension and to give it back the dignity of happening and prefiguration of the possible. In this context, the epigraph ‘I am your home and I love you. E tu la tua casa riama‘ (’I am your home and I love you. And you love your home again'), found in the entrance courtyard of Palazzo Magnini, is taken from the book Signorilità, by Countess Elena Morozzo Della Rocca (1933) and emphasises how the home is not just a place to live in, but a living entity, capable of reflecting the soul and identity of those who inhabit it, a precious refuge to be loved, cared for and respected.

Through a careful selection of works, the exhibition relates Arena's creative process to the space itself. The works, which he describes as ‘silent bodies’, find life and movement in the story they carry within them and in their interaction with their surroundings. The flat, with its atrium, its stairs, with the memories of moments experienced - children playing, adults living, generating and, finally, leaving the mark of time - becomes a stage where memory and identity merge. Each work adapts to the volumes and atmospheres of the place, where physical material meets the beauty of imperfection: the blackening of walls, the depth of shadows, the opacity of glass. A story of nostalgia and continuous transformation, an invitation to look inside in order to see the outside world, an experience that unites body, space and collective memory.

This exhibition thus becomes a space for reflection. Francesco Arena's artistic practices intertwine with the history of the place in a living, pulsating tale of memory, every detail becomes a voice, every trace becomes an echo of a past that resurfaces, also taking on a universal dimension. The environment is charged with meaning, welcoming fragments with a strong symbolic content. Nothing is erased, but everything is listened to and returned as a testimony of what has been, of what can still be. Listening to the places, letting oneself be guided by their silences, by the segments they hold. Looking for a light sign, almost imperceptible, that does not impose its presence by force, but insinuates itself with discretion, like one who tries to support a fragile wall with wooden planks, not to distort it, but to preserve its essence.