Radicamenti at Studio Museo Francesco Messina

Sometimes after living in a city for a certain amount of time, I find myself so consumed with the things I know that I forget to look around me and search out new experiences. Studio Museo Francesco Messina, a small deconsecrated church located on Via San Sisto, is a building that would be overlooked by the busy pedestrian or those who refuse to glance up from their screens. The building is humble and undemanding of your attention with the front of the building not facing the street, it can be hard to notice unless you know what you’re looking for.

Formerly a church it is now a museum paying homage to the artist Francesco Messina, who had previously used it as a studio. It hosts sculptures and artworks created by the deceased Scicialin artist who passed in 1995. Walking through the exhibition, which takes place across a couple of levels of the building allows one to see Messina’s development and acknowledge his great technical ability as well as his interest in realism.

What is most fascinating about the space is the large scale sculpture not by Francesco Messina but by Leonardo Nava that was commissioned by the Museum and inaugurated on June 16th of last year. The sculptural installation is a sort of winding rope structure that has been constructed by weaving together hazelnut branches. The sculpture is fascinating due to its ability to dynamically interact with its environment. It spans both the outside and the inner walls of the building and it highly contrasts the rigid natures of the walls and beams that it wraps itself around. It seems as if it erupted from the ground and continued climbing the building powering itself into the interior and back out. Nava’s work is an example of how nature and sculpture can come together to create something that is new and foreign to both worlds yet it takes so much from them and it is truly stunning. The curves, the texture, an the woven branches create this ever so slightly daunting energy that seems to vibrate off of the artwork.

Titled ‘Radicamenti’, the 45 linear meters of intertwined branches should be a location to pin on your map to check out next time you are in the area or the destination of an afternoon walk. “Happiness is to know and to wonder”, so I hope this article serves as an incentive for you to go out and so that you can wonder and marvel at something new.