Francesco Clemente, Birthday Self-Portrait, 2001. Mixed media on denim, 163 x 171 1/4 inches. © Francesco Clemente. Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery.
The twelve works that make up Travel Diary document Francesco Clemente’s journey through metaphysical space. The exhibition develops a parallel with alchemy, a practice which, although superficially involving the transmutation of lead into gold, truly aims at the metamorphosis of the alchemist themself into an angelic spirit. Clemente’s icons similarly document his own transformation into an artist and, ultimately, into art.
Even the number of pieces included in the show has mystical connotations. The twelve hours on the clock face, the twelve months in a year, the twelve signs of the zodiac: these are concerned with the passage of time, the circularity of the passing seasons, and human mortality—all transcended when the mortal artist transforms into art. It is no coincidence that the first piece to greet the visitor is Birthday Self-Portrait (2001), a 163 by 171-inch mixed media work on denim. Here Clemente peers out at us from the right, while all the years of his life, beginning in 1952, hover like a cluster of flowers on our left. Clemente depicts himself breathing out his life, both acknowledging his mortality and escaping it through art, which he represents with the thumb that accompanies the self-image. The wide chronological range of the works included at Vito Schnabel—the earliest from 1998 and the latest from 2025—chronicles both the passage of time and the creative process that serves as an antidote to mortality.