Alex Chalmers, Giulia Crispiani, Caterina De Nicola, Stelios Kallinikou, Eleonora Luccarini, Umico Niwa, Massimo Vaschetto

from 25.09.2024 to 23.11.2024

Alex Chalmers

The artwork features an elevator cabin removed from its shaft, disconnected from its usual function of transporting people up and down. Initially unrecognisable, its exterior, normally hidden, becomes visible as the viewer moves around it, revealing insulation patches, oil stains, dust, numbers and spider webs. The artist reconstructs and modifies the elevator to stand alone, detached from the shaft and its supporting tracks. This particular elevator is cut from a building in Rome on the occasion of the artist's first exhibition in Italy.

This elevator was manufactured by SABIEM, a company founded in 1921 in Milan that became a leading Italian elevator manufacturer, supplying lifts for iconic buildings. In the late 20th century, it was acquired by the Schindler Group and integrated into its global operations.

Historically, towering structures have symbolised power and opulence. Elevators, a hallmark of modern skyscrapers, epitomise progress and social hierarchy. They elevate individuals from ground level to corporate identities. However, Chalmers's sculpture subverts this narrative, portraying a dysfunctional ascension mechanism that leaves passengers stranded in a timeless purgatory.

Alex Chalmers (b. 1991 in Whangārei, Aotearoa, NZ, lives and works between Frankfurt and Rome) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts and studied with professor Haegue Yang at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Recent exhibitions include: Stipendienprogramm Ausstellung at Sammlung Pohl (Marburg, 2024), Recent Aquisitions, Industrie und Handelskammer (Wiesbaden, 2023), Elevator Shaft Opening at Nassauischer Kunstverein (Wiesbaden, 2022), Purgatory, 1822-Forum (Frankfurt, 2022) and Working title at Gr_und Gallery (Berlin, 2021).

Giulia Crispiani

Crispiani is a writer, visual artist, and performer who crafts an erotic, subversive avant-garde that dismantles the patriarchal logic of language. Her work draws from the generative energy of feminist movements, shaping itself as the creation of a desired community, which becomes an integral part of her research.

For Pietre, the artist conceived a piece that wraps around a column like a garment, transforming it into an ornamental feature of the architectural space. Her handwritten text on the paper forms an abstract map of streets and intersections, through fragments of thoughts, feelings, and verses. The work grounds these thoughts in the cobblestones, giving them the length of a step—a path to be walked on, whether by foot or car—while questioning whether thoughts truly have density, direction, or duration. The opaque pen gestures toward the future, imagining itself as a printing matrix.

Giulia Crispiani (b. 1986 in Ancora, lives and works in Rome) is an artist and writer. She collaborates with the editors of Nero Editions. She graduated in Ceramics at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and subsequently attended the Art and Research Honours Programme. She completed her training with an MA in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem. She has carried out several independent projects and performances both in Italy and abroad. Recent shows include: On Love at Istituto Svizzero (Roma, 2024), Fuori at Quadriennale di Roma (Rome, 2020-2021), Retrofuturo at MACRO (Rome, 2021-2024), Ossesso at Il Colorificio (Milan, 2020), Coming Soon at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, 2018). 

Caterina De Nicola

The artists presents a selection from her animal series of photographs. The focus of the photos lies in capturing the eyes of taxidermied creatures, the sole feature unable to be naturally preserved through taxidermy and thus artfully replaced. Across the series, she presents diverse perspectives, at times emphasising the animal's portrait and at others, encompassing the meticulously reconstructed museum settings. This approach evokes a profound sense of displacement, blurring the boundary between reality and artifice. The peculiarity and unsettling aura of the photographs become apparent upon closer inspection of the animals' eyes. The artist ingeniously substitutes their pupils with abstract images sourced from urban contexts. These figures become revenants looking at us, at the past or the future.

Caterina De Nicola (b. 1991 in Pescara, lives and works in Zurich) studied at Brera Art Academy in Milan and then graduated from ECAL in Lausanne (CH). Her recent solo shows include: The Unswept Floor at Halle fur Kunst (Luneburg, 2024), Reek of Past Pitfalls at Istituto Svizzero (Milan, 2023), Infedele at Baleno International (Rome, 2022), Lonely Fans at Chickentown (Zurich, 2021). Recent group shows include: Swiss Art Award 2024 at Messe Basel (Basel, 2024), Diario Notturno at MAXXI (l’Aquila, 2023), Che sarà sarà at Fondazione Sandretto (Guanine, 2023), Duo-show with Lina Pallotta at Last Tango (Zurich, 2022).

Stelios Kallinikou

The work is part of a series of videos that Kallinikou is doing where a moment in time is edited in such a way to repeat itself endlessly. The video work "sleep" is excavated from the artist’s family video archive. His young brother, filmed by his father, is trying to fall asleep while an adult is disrupting him in an effort to keep him awake. An instance situated in the threshold between dreamworld and reality. An act that insists on repeating itself in a circle between sleep and wakefulness. In a way the moment after a person wakes up from sleep or on the other hand the moment that a person is about to fall asleep is a moment that we are the most vulnerable.

Stelios Kallinikou (b. 1985 in Limassol, CY, lives and works in Limassol) studied History and Archeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Photography at like ESP in Thessaloniki. Recent solo exhibitions include: Calls and songs at Eins Gallery (Limassol, Cyprus 2024), Glass Cage Dream at Eins Gallery (Limassol, Cyprus 2022), acrobat above the dome at  Goethe-Institut (Zypern, 2021). Group shows include: Manifestations: Views of the otherworldly in painting and drawing at NiMAC, (Nicosia, CY, 2024), Seeing Through Melancholia: Transcultural Melancholias / Hüzün in the East Mediterranean at House of Hadji-georkakis Kornesios (Nicosia, CY 2023), In the Sea of the Setting Sun/Contemporary Photographic Practices and the Archive at State Gallery of Contemporary Art (Nicosia, CY 2023), The Broken Pitcher at Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Leipzig, DE 2023).

Eleonora Luccarini

Luccarini's work explores the processes of gender identification and the inherent ambiguity in self-discovery. By merging text and image, she investigates contemporary notions of self-performance, using verse and CGI to blur the boundaries between reality and representation. Her work prompts reflection on societal norms and perceptions of what is real.

This new piece takes on the work Bubble Barron (2019), a comic book in unique edition created in collaboration with illustrator Sathyan Rizzo. The work exhibited examines the character of the son of a former U.S. President, depicted as a ventriloquist in a digital drawing. The doll, with a subtle resemblance to the artist, becomes an ironic allegory of communication, highlighting how manipulation and control happen in constant interchange and mutual dependency.

Eleonora Luccarini (b. 1993 in Bologna, lives and works between Bologna and Amsterdam) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Università IUAV di Venezia and Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She has been shortlisted for the Pini Art Prize 2021-2022 at Fondazione Adolfo Pini in Milano. Recent solo shows include: Rehearsals at Cripta 747 (Turin, 2023), We don’t believe in fortunes, at Baleno International (Rome, 2022), Prime Time, at Fondazione SmART (Rome, 2022). Recent group shows: Compelling video works at Baleno International (Rome, 2023), Banana split, slippery and hurt, Premio GAMeC at BACO (Bergamo, 2023) Bodiesbodies at La rada (Locarno CH, 2022), Retrofuturo at MACRO (Rome, 2021-2024), Badly Buried at Fondazione Sandretto (Turin, 2021).

Umico Niwa

Rejecting Western notions of personhood, Niwa explores alternative modes of existence, unbound by bodily constraints or gender constructs. Her creations evoke a state of being defined by constant transformation—a flower wilting, a fruit ripening. A seed vault, a genetic sequence, a sensorium, a somatic memory bank. A valley teeming with weeds, bursting with life.

In this exhibition, the artist presents the Daphne Adorned Series, a collection of small anthropomorphic sculptures known as Daphnes. These miniature, nymph-like figures animate the space, positioned in unconventional ways as if exploring the gallery and interacting with their surroundings. Crafted from foraged local organic matter—flowers, leaves, petals, nuts—gathered before the opening, the series weaves through ancient mythology, fable, paganism, natural folklore, and contemporary fantasy, effortlessly fluttering from one reference to another. The Daphnes symbolise the remarkable resilience of even the most delicate forms of life.

Umico Niwa (b. 1991 in Japan, lives and works in Houston, USA) received her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond in 2020, after attending the Maryland College Institute of Art. Recent solo shows include: The Harbinger of Luck: Made of Kisses and Clovers x+x+ at Museum of Fine Arts Houston (USA, 2024), My Life Inside A Shoe (the phantom cricket) at Fig Gallery (Tokyo, Japan, 2023), The Quantified Elf (and how it came to love itself) at Someday Gallery (NYC, USA, 2022). Recent group shows include: Moving Clouds at Southern Exposure (San Francisco, USA, 2023), The Invention of Nature at Nino Mier Gallery (Los Angeles, 2023), Sangre Y Savia at Studio Croma (Mexico City, 2023), Almost Spring at XYZ Collective (Tokyo, Japan, 2022).

Massimo Vaschetto

In the larger painting, rendered on a nearly life-sized scale, the figure is stripped of its physical characteristics and defining features, anchored in a space of confinement and isolation. This confinement simultaneously exposes and protects the figure. Vaschetto’s work often explores the body and its experiences of pain, but in this latest piece, the focus shifts toward an inner dimension—a psychological representation of the unconscious—emphasised by the facelessness of the figure.

In Gold Tooth, the artist meticulously recreates an image from his extensive personal archive, which frequently draws upon medical photographs. His interest lies not in passing moral judgment, but in examining how images circulate and transform within society, often becoming detached from their original context. Through layers of paint, Vaschetto distances the viewer from the subject, offering a reinterpretation of contemporary visual culture. 

Massimo Vaschetto (b. 1980 in Turin, lives and works in Milan) holds a BA and an MA from Brera Academy in Milan. Recent solo exhibitions inclide: Golden at MON (Turin, 2023), And for a very short period of time I was left, like an idiot, without any pain at all at Baleno (Rome, 2019), Uomo Seduto in Regime di Guerra at Armada (Milan, 2017). Recent group shows include: Subtle Fixations at Baleno International (Rome, 2023), Badly Buried, at Fondazione Sandretto (Guanine, 2021).