The works of Francis Offman are canvases (not mounted on stretchers) with irregular contours, paintings that come from the associations of parts (or portions) of vivid, flat, uniform colors, and collage zones made with the insertion of scraps of paper – thin or thicker sheets, salvaged from bread wrappers or shoeboxes – the enter the composition like rips or wounds. An encounter that only on occasion makes elements emerge that can be traced back to the real: a dry tree, a mountain, a portion of water, earth or sky…

Offman’s pieces are free compositions that imply fragile references, minimal and understated, to a faraway world (Africa and Rwanda, where the artist spent some of his childhood) and its customs, a traumatic memory and an uncertain identity; jagged, dynamic spaces that cannot give rise to an integral landscape.

(Davide Ferri)