TEXT: Megamalls are the cathedrals of postmodernism, new places of congregation...
Megamalls are the cathedrals of postmodernism, new places of congregation, centres for the manufactured sacrality of consumer-driven spaces. Francolino confronts these structures through the work’s process – a cycle of construction, destruction and reconstruction analogous to the evolution of consumerist man that underscores our culpability in these cycles – by imagining them in both their present and future forms, the cracks articulating the ephemerality and fleeting nature of corporeal existence. Concrete, the work’s main material and the building block of modern life, defines our age and underlines the artificiality and constructedness of modern consumerism; yet, framed by and contained within wood, a symbol of the perfection and resilience of nature, it creates a jarring contrast that serves to underline the vulnerability and brevity of man-made structures, which we often believe to be permanent, indestructible, enduring. Mall of America is, ultimately, a presentation of our collective future archaeology and a critique of society’s gravitation toward the materialistic. Moreover, though, Francolino aims to compel audiences to engage with our innate relationships to consumerism and nature, to recognize our own transience, and to reevaluate and rediscover the outcomes of our immersion in modern consumer culture…

Bethany Dowell