By Francesco Vitali & Alec Boreham
4 – 8 June 2024
Private View: Tuesday 4 June, 6-9pm
A touring duo exhibition that develops a new and personal contemporary vision of architecture, coinciding with the London Festival of Architecture.
Hand drawn, printed on baryta paper Mounted on Di-Bond
50 cm x 65.15 cm (Variable measurement)
The research of Alec & Franz continues in their artistic works presented here entitled “Floating Architectural Spaces”. The common interests of both, lead the two artists to develop a new and personal contemporary vision of architecture. “We live our cities with the frenzy of our time, sometimes without dwelling on the details that characterise them. It is enough to stop and observe, to understand, dream and experience our realities in a different way”. The classic and ancient architectures that blend in our modernity, deconstructed, recomposed and revisited in the work of Alec and Franz, transport us to other dimensions. Everyone can find their own experience in the complex images, the result of careful processing of hand-made drawings. Deconstructing and then reassembling iconic monuments that belong to the imagination of each of us.
Alec and Franz began their collaboration in 2019. They worked together for the opera “Castor et Pollux” by Jean-Phillipe Rameau, staged at the Warsaw Chamber Opera in November 2021. They designed and implemented the projected scenographies, transforming the theatre in a sort of contemporary planetarium. Alec’s passion for drawing, for architecture, and his innate search for detail, combined with Franz’s experience in the scenographic, artistic and visual fields, created in the baroque opera of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1754), a new contemporary dimension of the Baroque in art and architecture. After all, in XVII / XVIII centuries, the purpose of Theatre, and Art, was precisely to amaze through the technologies of that time. Alec and Franz aim is to amaze and marvel the viewer today through the use of hand drawings revisited through today’s technology. “We need to transform the materials that make up our cities, and the monuments that characterise them apparently heavy, into something different, into something light”.
Hand drawn, printed on baryta paper Mounted on Di-Bond and Plexi
50 cm x 50 cm (Variable measurement)
Alec and Franz in 2022 exhibited “Floating Architectural Spaces” for the first time at the Europe Art Fair held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with critical acclaim, and then at the New Artists Fair In London in 2023. The mixing of the arts through today’s technology led Alec and Franz to explore new horizons by developing the artistic research in other artistic contexts that began with the musical work “Castor et Pollux” also with “Floating architectural spaces“. In 2023 a new animated series of this artistic project was created to accompany a new Music Opera entitled “Music and the senses of the soul” featuring the young English baroque tenor Kieran White for Monteverdi Festival held in Cremona, Italy, which will be on tour in Italy and in Europe in 2024 and 2025.
Hand drawn, printed on lenticular 3D Mounted on Di-bond
50 cm x 50 cm (Variable measurement)
Meet the Artists
Born in Novara in 1971, Francesco Vitali graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in set design in 1996 with honours.
In 1994 and 1995 he studied in California at San Francisco State University at the Theatre Arts Department, working as a set designer for various prose and musical productions. In 1997 he worked as a light designer and photographer in New York and San Francisco and thus began a successful career as photographer and as set designer as well that led him to work in various productions with various directors.
In 2000 he won a public competition as a set designer organised by the European Union and the Teatro Massimo Foundation in Palermo and worked as a production designer for some operas productions. In 2002 he began his collaboration with the director and choreographer Deda Cristina Colonna, and in 2005 with Fred Santambrogio for some operas and dramatic theatre working as a light designer, set and costume designer.
In 2008 he signed direction and photography for the ArtFilm Voluptas dolendi i gesti del Caravaggio | Voluptas dolendi, the gestures of Caravaggio, taken from the show of the same name by Deda Cristina Colonna and Mara Galassi, screened all over the world and broadcast on the CLASSICA HD SKY TV channel from 2011 to 2021.
His collaboration as set designer, light designer and costume designer with the director and choreographer Deda Cristina Colonna, continues with the operas Armide, by Jean-Baptiste Lully, staged from 2015 to 2022 in Europe, and Castor et Pollux by Jean-Philippe Rameau, produced by the Warsaw Chamber Opera (2021-2022-soon to be staged in 2024) with which he won the Jan Kiepura Award 2021 for best costumes. Both operas were broadcast by the Polish National TV channel TVP Kultura.
In 2018 he wrote, directed and co-produced a documentary film entitled Villa Visconti Borromeo Litta, four centuries of history, a journey through time between art, delights and water features. Sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, co-produced by the Amici di Villa Litta Association, the Municipality of Lainate and Roadmovie, screened in Italy and worldwide starting from 2018 (Italian Embassy in the United States of America in Washington, Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, National Gallery Washington to name a few), purchased and broadcast by SKY ARTE and by the Polish National TV Network TVP Kultura and TVP Kultura 2.
In 2023 Francesco signed the artistic direction, set, lights and costumes of the opera-monologue with the english baroque tenor Kieran White, La musica e le ragioni dell’anima – Music and the senses of the Soul, Festival Monteverdi/Teatro Ponchielli, scheduled for 2024 in an updated version at the Warsaw Chamber Opera.
In 2024 the art project by Francesco and Alec Boreham Floating Architectural Spaces will be exhibited at the Bermondsey Project Space Gallery in London, on the occasion of the London Architecture Festival.
Born in Folkestone, Kent, UK in 1969, Alec Boreham graduated from University College Hospital in central London with a degree in nursing. After various experiences abroad as a nurse, he returned to England in 1996, where he continued his career in various health facilities and finally, in 2022, became Deputy Chief Nurse in the Endoscopy Department at University College Hospital NHS in London.
Between 2000 and 2002 he attended the London College of Printing thus consolidating his interest and his passion for architecture, art, photography and design. Alec then begins to develop his talents through different expressive techniques which include graphite drawings of urban landscapes and architectural structures, winning in 2022 one English prestigious awards such as “Alexander Thomson Society award 2022”.
From 2017 he began to deepen his passion for architecture in general and in particular for oriental and Islamic architecture starting to study at Oxford University, developing some series of graphic works focused on iconic European and Middle Eastern monuments.
From 2019 he began collaborating with the set designer, costume designer and light designer Francesco Vitali developing an artistic project entitled Floating Architectural spaces, exhibited in Amsterdam at Europe Art Fair 2022 and in London at New Artist Fair 2023. The collaboration with Francesco Vitali as artist and set designer collaborator continues in 2020 with 2021 Jan Kiepura Awarded Opera Castor et Pollux by JeanPhilippe Rameau produced by the Warsaw Chamber Opera, broadcast by the Polish National Television TVP Kultura since 2021, on stage in 2021, 2022 and soon in 2024.
In 2023, University College Hospital in London commissioned Alec to create an artwork that will be included in the permanent art collection of the prestigious London hospital.
In 2023 he collaborated with the designer Francesco Vitali with an unpublished and animated version of the Floating Architectural Spaces project for the creation of the sets for the opera-monologue La musica e le ragioni dell’anima – Music and the senses of the soul with the English tenor Kieran White, staged at the Monteverdi Festival / Ponchielli Theater of Cremona, soon to be staged in 2024 at the Warsaw Chamber Opera.
In 2024 the project by Alec and designer Francesco Vitali Floating Architectural Spaces will be exhibited at the Bermondsey Project Space Gallery in London, on the occasion of the London Architecture Festival.
