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Francesco Greco does not represent or evoke: he creates. He is a chromatic sculptor, an aesthete of matter; he does not only exalt the material he uses for volumes, but he also considers pigment as matter. The coordinates of his creation stretch along fractures and into the depths of vibrantly colored mixes, whose form, however, is sober and simple, rigidly geometric.

Greco was not, strictly speaking, born as an Artist. His father worked in interior finishes: a talented plasterer who had a particular skill in craftsmanship with precision in execution and refinement of shapes. Francesco, beyond the fascination with the plasters, gypsum, and mortars he experienced in his father’s workshop, refined his relationship with materials by working with resins and metals used in dental technology, finely chased.

It is a journey of refinement that passes through successive stages: from material as necessity - plaster, mortar - to the pleasure of capturing light - molding, decorative gypsum - to the replacement of reality: polymer that turns into enamel and crown, that transforms from dust to smile. There is also a spark of art that has ignited Francesco Greco's soul, revealing to him the power of non-verbal language, the legacy of a catastrophic earthquake: Burri's Cretto.

Old Gibellina, erased by nature and the violence of the earthquake, but evoked, made - thanks to Art - once again tangible and walkable in its dead intersections, in its chessboard urban layout, reveals to Francesco Greco another aspect of matter: the ability to be memory. Furthermore, it connects him to his roots: he, who lives between Switzerland and Sicily, was born in Gela, where the great island - dazzling and white - slowly emerges from the blue waters of the sea. His returns from Lugano now reach into the transparency of the Mediterranean thanks to a village perched on its cliffs: Castellammare del Golfo.

The need to identify with the sea is a longing that goes beyond simple allegory; the Artist defines his state of mind as either restless or calm, as if a navigator were observing him. It is the color blue, however, that captivates and torments him. An ambivalent color, cold and metallic like the sea in winter or warm and caressing, though dark, like the gaze into the abyss.

Francesco Greco paints for himself, he does not invent a narrative language, he does not seek to become a school founder: he is a solitary traveler of the deep seas. In fact, he swims, he dives, he remains suspended - floating - on the thrill of the chasm, flying without falling. Perhaps, in his heart, he would like to overcome the counterforce of the water and let himself be sucked into that infinite blue, which hides ravines, plains, and ancient crevices shaped by currents.

Fascinated by the power of what opens before him, aware that he is neither fish nor stone, he tries to reach his physical limit toward the abyss, then rise, emptied of all strength, exhausted by the imponderable struggle to cling to the magic of the depths, carrying with him the mental image of a path only glimpsed but never grasped. It is the memory of the beyond, of a world completely beyond human and artistic biological reach. There is a fascination that drives every mountaineer, every freediver, every rock climber to identify with the object - rather, with the subject - of their love. After all, there is the awareness that this passion has no balance and is a devouring pull in which one frees oneself by losing oneself. The Art of Francesco Greco reflects this rational limit, when the mind manages to dominate the almost irresistible attraction of the great leap, viscerally longed for but held back by a healthy desire for life.

We read, from the words of the Artist, the story of this passion: "I have been fascinated by matter not only in the technical sense of the term, because matter - like mortar, plaster, gypsum - simultaneously stimulates both touch and visual perception; it is matter ready to be worked, shaped by hand; and color is also matter, the color of the Sicilian sea that has always belonged to me and that I feel within me like a boundless universe, hidden from everyone but always open to me, a place of peace and disorientation of my inner gaze. It is not the blinding white with which Master Burri immortalized the memory of an entire community erased by an event of unimaginable power. For me, it is the blue that I have always explored in its infinite shades, not using it for a narrative but as a refuge I always and only direct toward myself. Each time I dive - writes Francesco Greco - immersing myself in yet another search between rationality and impulse, to know and calm a feeling I could define as the shock wave of the stormy sea, a tsunami, a scream of water, a tidal wave that engulfs me and drags me into the abyss, leaving me the chance to feed on a bubble of oxygen, vital and weightless, before plunging again into this unsettling darkness from which I draw inspiration."

Massimiliano Reggiani