Awaiting Climax | curated by Federico Montagna: Mattia Barbalaco, Nicolò Brezza, Edizioni Brigantino, Lucia Cristiani, Andrea Di Lorenzo, Marta Ravasi

The project investigates the space of intermediation and experimentation originating from the ever more sidereal distance between the human and non-human dimensions. At a historical moment when imagining a single ecosystem in harmony has become an increasingly utopian proposition, the individuality of the anthropic horizon—both singular and collective—struggles to open itself to the outside world through an equitable and mutually generative exchange.

In the contemporary condition, this inability to decentre the self seems to repel every authentic bond, which should presuppose an encounter with the Other as an alterity that eludes the control of the Self, resists it, and can neither be possessed nor consumed—it is the ‘Eros in Agony’ theorised by philosopher Byung-Chul Han in his essay of the same title.

This concerns not only anthropocentric thinking, but also extends to real relationships and connections that are becoming increasingly difficult to trace and consolidate in the present, rendering the future an inscrutable zone of shadow. The idea of equilibrium has itself become a hope to be pursued, paradoxically, within a condition of continual transformation. After all, speaking once again of nature, in ecology a state of absolute quiescence—the so-called climax—is by definition the endpoint of a process of succession, one that passes through turbulent, often dramatic phases of change before reaching stability.

The works in the exhibition thus seek to suggest new and possible reconfigurations of these ambivalent relationships, reconsidering terms such as domesticity, habitat and landscape as fluid and mutable concepts.

Edizioni Brigantino (Valentina Lucchetti & Canedicoda), working from the field of design and from a practice rooted in the domestic space, suggest a collective mode of engaging with the object in their multicoloured totem “CRLL #198 (A fior di velluto)” (2026), severing it from any specific functionality as a furnishing element. The work is thus reinterpreted as a device with which to interact, narrowing the divide that separates it from the outside world. Not coincidentally, reality materially insinuates itself into the structure through a screen displaying a new video work by the artists, filmed during their most recent stay on Salina. The underwater footage literally immerses the viewer in the island’s sea, while an overlaid text accompanies the images and further emphasises a liquid realm in which reality and dream influence one another, prompting the question: “where does imagination spring from?”

This intersection is equally evident in the works of Lucia Cristiani (*1991). The landscape physically enters works such as “Us for now, us forever” (2026), where the frames of two modernist chairs convey, on the one hand, the collapse of a much-vaunted promise of renewal and, on the other, accommodate and elevate an anthropic rendering of nature in the form of silver-plated wildflowers and thistles. This same cohesive reality is contaminated by other elements, such as the sea salt taking hold of the mirror in “Salty Lick” (2025), or the small alien sculptures in the series of imitation-crystal glasses which, almost parasitically, spread across the gallery floor and appropriate the exhibition space. In this latter series in particular, time seems to have frozen, so much so that the warmth of the party can only be imagined: in the encrusted wine stains and settled dust, we glimpse yet another unsuccessful act of abandonment. Alongside time, the very idea of a domesticity bound to an autonomous and independent space also collapses.

A similarly suspended atmosphere characterises the paintings of Mattia Barbalaco (*1999). Like the taxidermist, the subject of his eponymous painting, who exerts control over time and nature by practising taxidermy on a bird, the painter attempts to do the same: to fix and elevate a moment, suspending becoming. Yet this is an illusory process: the stuffed animal is no longer an animal but a simulacrum, and the world painted by the artist is not reality but its reconstruction. A solemn aura also pervades the figures in “Provinciale aspirante” (2026) and “Let me darken” (2026), set within bucolic scenes and seemingly unspoilt rural landscapes which, on the contrary, convey a sense of oppression and melancholy. The yearning for an elsewhere so deeply desired by humankind is invariably thwarted by a harsh and unvarnished reality that holds us back while asserting a space of its own — much like the tentacles of the octopus entwined around the body of the woman portrayed by the artist.

Far more nebulous and cryptic, by contrast, are the settings that animate Nicolò Brezza’s (*1991) paintings. The animal and human spheres intermingle on the canvas, suggesting unprecedented configurations of bonds and relationships between the two worlds. The human seems to be evoked solely in relation to a nature that determines and accompanies it—hence, not coincidentally, the recurring motif of the double: two hunters, two dogs, two rabbits, two tigers, and so forth. A sense of unease and magic persists in the reading of subjects that are not always decipherable, their contours blurred and superimposed, also through the liquid quality of the paint, which makes the compositions appear almost to float in space. For biographical reasons, Brezza’s gaze has been shaped by the landscape in which he grew up and which still surrounds him today. Painting therefore becomes, for the artist, an act of responsibility, imprinting memories through a process of reconstructing memory in images.

A closer, more analytical gaze is that of Marta Ravasi (*1987), who, continuing a personal enquiry into the very practice of painting, undertakes a layered process of analysis and attentive listening to the gesture, beginning with the representation of still lifes, each time arranged in unprecedented compositions. In her small-format canvases, Ravasi succeeds in modelling not only the light but also the rarefied air between form and space, as though the solidity of the painted fruit were the result of its contact with the atmospheric pressure surrounding it. The edges, in fact, ripple and dissolve, like the boundaries between inside and outside, subject and background, visible and invisible. Within these compressed scenarios, silence is palpable, expanding through time an instant that appears fixed, but which through repetition becomes infinite, in a continuous interplay of absences and presences.

A similar process of close observation is undertaken by Andrea Di Lorenzo (*1994) in “Arum” (2026), a new series of photographs printed on fabric and produced using a thermal camera—a device often employed in military contexts to detect bodies through variations in temperature. Di Lorenzo uses this surveillance instrument in an attempt to capture on camera the heat emitted by Arum italicum, a particular plant species capable of naturally generating an increase in temperature specifically to enhance its appeal to pollinating insects — a process also known as thermogenesis. The resulting images possess a strongly saturated and luminous chromatic spectrum, obscuring any clear reading of the subject and instead shifting attention, once again, towards atmospheric space, making visible what is imperceptible to the human eye. In these works, heat reflects not only a contradictory nature, as an element that is at once attractive and repellent to the gaze, but also a subtle power dynamic: the Arum temporarily traps the insects it attracts, forcing them to rub against its reproductive organs before releasing them.

In conclusion, if we seek to grasp the increasingly forceful signals being sent by nature, redefining the boundaries of a possible coexistence appears to be a task fraught with unease. It is no coincidence that the term climax can be understood in two other senses, in some respects at odds with the original one and closer to the human sphere: in the sexual realm — returning to Eros — the climax is the point of maximum fulfilment and arousal; while in cinema, theatre and literature, it denotes the moment of greatest pathos and tension. In other words, the crucial juncture for a long-awaited turning point, whether positive or negative.

 (Text by Federico Montagna)