Haunted Garden curated by Leonardo Devito

Cities are the starting point for Miriam Marafioti who explores the shifting sedimentations of the urban realm: her landscapes investigate the physical memory of specific places.

Delicate details of gestures and objects belonging to Sofia Massalongo’s friends assume the appearance of distant memories in her paintings. Simple and indelible.

Alessandro Miotti’s practice looks to his childhood memories. Figures are presented as archetypes with simple, ostensible representations that recall the presence of symbols or icons.

In the practice of Oxana Tregubova a sacred and primordial relationship with nature is suggested through a language that is reminiscent of the artist’s intimacy and personal memories.

Differently, Francesco Zanatta examines our emotional relationship with vernacular objects; he elaborates on their features to reveal how they can have ambiguous – and perhaps surprising – meanings.

What unites these artists is the distillation of images that ultimately always remains ambiguous. Meaning is never anything explicitly revealed. They are all real visions that try to smoke out something remote: the memory of a gesture, nostalgia of a particular day, or a distant world just barely perceived. We might even lose sight of that thin line between what’s real and what’s not.

— Leonardo Devito, 2024

NOTES TO EDITORS

Living and working in Turin, Italy, Leonardo Devito’s (b.1997, Florence) narrative based painting practice is derived from autobiographical memories that recount moments of intimacy, adolescence, and historical influence.

Leonardo studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence (BFA, 2020), the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and an MFA in painting at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts of Turin.

His works range from solemn oil painting, delicate, mythological etchings, to carved terracotta reliefs all possessing a distinctly subtle aesthetic reminiscent of Renaissance painting. Works also adopt a fascination with the Italian landscapes he knows so fondly from his adolescence in Florence to his current residing in Turin. Current personal affairs combine with more historicised influences to culminate narratives dealing with maturation from childhood, adolescence, to adulthood.

With a neutral, earthy palette the works are often allegorised as moments of trauma or even pre-trauma, perhaps reminiscent of psychoanalytic development. The sinister pondering that echoes through each work, a certain awkwardness in freeze-framed compositions, continue to set the tone for Leonardo’s practice.

Devito’s recent solo exhibitions include My Favourite Things, Galleria Acappella, Naples (2023); and Leonardo Devito, Era Gallery, Milan (2022). Recent group exhibitions include After Reminiscence, Casino Projects, Milan (2024); Unity Wanted Volume 2, Street Levels Gallery, Florence (2021); Urban Art City, curated by Street Levels Gallery, Civic Art Gallery of Follonica, Follonica; and XI Biennale di Incisione, as part of the exhibition Jean Dubuffet – Mimmo Paladino, Mac, n, Monsummano Terme, Italy (both 2019).