Art & Exhibitions

In 1454, the Augustinians in San Sepolcro wanted a grand polyptych for the high altar of their church. They commissioned hometown master Piero della Francesca for the task. It took Piero 12 years—Pope Nicholas V kept demanding and hogging his services at the Vatican—and stood as a magnificent demonstration of the painter’s talents.
Across 30 panels, Piero placed two saints on either of the Virgin and the surrounding predella was filled with New Testament scenes and Augustinian figures. The polyptych evidenced Piero’s mastery of space and light, as well as his familiarity with trendy Spanish painting.
Piero della Francesca, San Nicola da Tolentino (1454–69). Photo: Poldi Pezzoli Museum.
The popularity of such polyptychs didn’t last. By the end of the 16th century, it had been disassembled and sold off panel-by-panel.
Eight panels have survived and are scattered across five museums in Europe and the United States. For the past two decades, museums have tried, but failed, to reassemble Piero’s polyptych.
Piero della Francesca, Saint Michael the Archangel (1454–69). Photo: Poldi Pezzoli Museum.
Now, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan has succeeded. Through June 20, visitors will be able to enjoy what remains of the Augustinian Polyptych 555 years after it was painted.
The break came when Alessandra Quarto, the director of Poldi Pezzoli Museum, learned that New York’s Frick Collection, which owns four panels, would be closed for six months ahead of its 2024 grand reopening. The Frick proved willing leading to an exhibition that Quarto has called “the reunion of the century.”
Piero della Francesca, Saint Augustine (1454–69). Photo: Poldi Pezzoli Museum.
Milan holds Piero’s Saint Nicholas of Tolentino and with the Frick onboard, it proved possible to convince London’s National Gallery, Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon to make the requisite loans.
The exhibition presents the four saints (St. Michael the Archangel, St. John the Evangelist, Saint Nicholas, and Saint Augustine) in a staggered formation with a blank space for the central panel.
Piero della Francesca, San Giovanni Evangelista (1454–69). Photo: Poldi Pezzoli Museum.
Curated by Machtelt Brüggen Israëls of the Rijksmuseum and Nathaniel Silver of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the exhibition also offered an opportunity to conduct diagnostic investigations on the panels. Studies revealed the central panel depicted the coronation of the Virgin, as opposed to a scene of Virgin and Child, as had long been assumed.
Piero della Francesca, The Crucifixion (1454–69). Photo: Poldi Pezzoli Museum.
This conclusion was reached through discovering traces of two wings on the panels flanking the centerpiece. The wings, one pink and one blue, were removed when the altarpiece was disassembled because it would have seemed incongruous. Furthermore, experts found a foot beneath a brocade dress on the panel depicting Michael the Archangel, which suggests a kneeling Virgin. Both details are consistent with period depictions of the Virgin’s coronation.
The four panels depicting the saints reappeared miraculously in Milan in the 1800s and organizers are hopeful the exhibition might prompt more to resurface.
“Piero della Francesca: The Augustinian Polyptych Reunited” is on view at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Via Alessandro Manzoni, 12, Milan, Italy, through June 24.
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“Ecce Homo: Behold the Man,” an expansive new exhibition at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., explores how artists have interpreted the Passion of Christ over the past five centuries.
The Passion, derived from the Latin word patior meaning “to suffer, bear, endure,” refers to Christ’s final days as described in the New Testament. Celebrated during Easter, it includes his entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper with his disciples, his betrayal by Judas, his trial before the Roman adjudicator Pontius Pilate, and his crucifixion. A popular theme in Christian religious art, the Passion symbolizes the belief that the Son of God sacrificed himself to absolve the sins of all mankind.
Installation view of “Ecce Homo: Behold the Man” at Museum of the Bible. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
The title of the exhibition borrows from the phrase that Pontius Pilate is said to have uttered upon presenting Jesus, bound and lashed, to a Roman crowd. “Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe,” reads the Bible passage John 19:5. “And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!”
To trace how representations of the Passion have changed significantly throughout art history, the show encompasses the figurative woodcuts of the Medieval era through the lifelike works by artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. A bulk of the exhibition is given over to art of the 20th century, when the Passion was abstracted and appropriated to comment on themes beyond the religious.
Salvador Dalí with his painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross. Photo: PA Images via Getty Images.
Here, Dalí’s Ecce Homo (1969) takes the spotlight. The watercolor drawing was created with the technique “bulletism,” involving firing an antique gun loaded with ink capsules at a blank sheet of paper. The splatters, in this case, formed the face of Christ’s thorn-crowned face.
Drawn to the Catholic traditions of his native Spain, particularly in the postwar period, Dalí’s interest in the Passion, a topic he tackled more than once, was a response to his anxieties about the “atomic age.” As he wrote in his 1942 autobiography: “I believe, above all, in the real and unfathomable force of the philosophic Catholicism of France and in that of the militant Catholicism of Spain.”
Tyrus Clutter, Jesus Reviled (2006). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
Other contemporary interpretations of the Passion include Hubertus Giebe’s sad-faced Christ, rendered in the style of German Expressionism; Romanian artist Ioana Datcu’s collaged portrait of Jesus; and Ralph Hall’s vivid painting that captures the lashes that Jesus suffered before his crucifixion.
See more images from the exhibition below.
Installation view of “Ecce Homo: Behold the Man” at Museum of the Bible. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
W. French, Ecce Homo (after Guido Reni) (ca. 17th century). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
Ralph Hall, Ecce Homo (1986). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
Unknown artist, Man of Sorrows and Mater Dolorosa (1524). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
Installation view of “Ecce Homo: Behold the Man” at Museum of the Bible. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
Félix Bonfils, Ecce Homo (ca. 1880s). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
Cornelis Cort, Ecce Homo (1602). Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Bible.
“Ecce Homo: Behold the Man” is on view at the Museum of the Bible, 400 4th St SW, Washington, D.C. through May 15.
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“The Crystal Ball of Pop” was the nickname bestowed upon Interview magazine after its founding in 1969 by Andy Warhol. The magazine celebrated the zeitgeist’s values of wealth, beauty, and fame, apparent at first glance with their iconic cover photographs of A-list celebrities. Many thought Warhol himself was behind the covers, but the work was all Richard Bernstein’s.
Richard Bernstein and Andy Warhol in 1978, photographed by Bobby Grossman. Photo courtesy of NeueHouse Madison Square.
“Richard Bernstein is my favorite artist. He makes everyone look so famous,’ said Warhol, who took interest in the artist after attending his solo show in 1965. Between 1972 and 1989, Bernstein made 189 mixed-media, polychromatic covers for the magazine, featuring the likes of Cher, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger, and his dear friend Grace Jones, whose son he was godfather to. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, and the National Portrait Gallery. A new exhibition at NeueHouse in New York will showcase more than 20 of his star-studded portraits.
Grace Jones on the cover of Interview magazine in October, 1984. Photo courtesy of NeueHouse Madison Square.
Working out of a studio in Chelsea, Bernstein thrived in the beating heart of NYC’s social scene amid a celebrity-heavy culture of hedonism. He had a Studio 54 VIP card. If the club ever wanted a particular celebrity to attend, they would call Bernstein and invite him directly. His work is emblematic of the high-glamor of its time
Bernstein was also an innovator, creating deepfake nudes of celebrities decades before the advent of A.I. In 1968, he created one of his most controversial pieces, The Nude Beatles, a neon technicolor group portrait with the Fab Fours’ heads superimposed on lithe, naked male bodies. The prints were confiscated by order of a French judge, and the Beatles label, Apple Records, filed a losing lawsuit against him. When Bernstein later met John  Lennon, he impressed upon him the missed opportunity of using the scandalous image for an album cover.
Bernstein’s cover image of Isabella Rossellini from the January 1982 issue of Interview magazine. Photo courtesy of NeueHouse Madison Square.
For the magazine covers, Interview would commission other hot analog photographers who produced a silver gelatin print that was delivered to Bernstein for manipulation and bedazzlement before going to print. Rory Trifon, the president of the estate of Richard Bernstein, elaborated on the process: “the cover subject was decided by Bob Colacello, art directed by Marc Balet, and photographed by the world’s most renowned photographers such as Greg Gorman, Matthew Rolston, Albert Watson, and Peter Strongwater among others.” Each of those photographers would supply Bernstein with a group of silver gelatin prints, who “would then choose the best image and then crop, enlarge, and illustrate; airbrush, paint, and collage to achieve the final piece. The artwork would be approved by Andy and then it would go to print. Taken together, the overall collaborative covers are the final result from the greatest photographers, illustrated by Pop Art’s greatest illustrator, and approved by the Pope of Pop himself making them truly remarkable.”
The June 1984 cover of Interview magazine featured Kevin Costner, by Richard Bernstein. Photo courtesy of NeueHouse Madison Square.
Thirty years before Damien Hirst’s famous paintings of pills, Richard Bernstein was exhibiting paintings of pills while he lived and worked in Paris. Paloma Picasso, daughter of Pablo Picasso, was his art assistant. Praising her former boss, Picasso once said, “Bernstein puts wit into the beauties, fantasy into the rich, depth into the glamorous and adds instant patina to newcomers.”
The exhibition The Interview Magazine Covers, 1972-1989: Richard Bernstein’s Portraits of Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine runs from March 26–June 30, 2024 at NeueHouse, Madison Square, New York.
September 1981, Fran Lebowitz made the cover of Interview magazine. By Richard Bernstein. Photo courtesy of NeueHouse Madison Square.
“The Interview Magazine Covers, 1972–1989: Richard Bernstein’s Portraits for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine” is on view at NeueHouse Madison Square, 110 E 25th St, New York, through June 30.
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The San Domenico Museum in Forlì, Italy, is hosting a monumental exhibition, “Pre-Raphaelites: Modern Renaissance.” The show brings together 360 works of art, borrowed from major European, American, and British museums, as well as private collections, foregrounding Italian masterpieces spanning from Cimabue to Veronese. The first multi-disciplinary exhibition of its kind in Italy, the show delves into the profound influence of Italian Renaissance art on the British Pre-Raphaelite movement of the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.
Frederic Leighton, Greek Girls Picking up Pebbles by the Sea (1871). Collection Pérez Simón, Mexico.
“Never before has there been an opportunity to put so many British works from this period in conversation with the Italian forerunners,” said Peter Trippi, a co-curator of the show. This is largely because borrowing Italian Renaissance and medieval art out of Italy is incredibly complicated due to the expense as well as the fragility and rarity of the works, which are typically cherished by the churches and museums in which they reside.
Among the highlights are celebrated works by Italian masters such as Cimabue, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Titian, juxtaposed with major pieces by renowned British artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris. Notably, the exhibition spotlights often overlooked contributions of women artists like Evelyn De Morgan, Elizabeth Siddal, and Julia Margaret Cameron to the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
The installation was designed by Lucchi & Biserni. Photo: Emanuele Rambaldi.
Structured as a captivating visual dialogue across time, the exhibition traces three generations of Pre-Raphaelites, a group founded in 1848 with the the mission to rejuvenate British art during the industrial age. Determined to recapture the spirit of medieval and Renaissance Italian artists who worked before the death of Raphael in 1520, Pre-Raphaelites rejected the academic conventions of their time by re-envisioning styles and themes from the past in strikingly modern ways. They drew on a dynamic array of Italian precedents, embracing Venetian Gothic architecture, the “Primitive” paintings at London’s National Gallery, and the sophisticated sensuality of artists like Veronese and Titian.
The installation, designed by Lucchi & Biserni of Forlì, showcases an array of works by prominent Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton, and John Ruskin. More than 50 design objects, including four tremendous Holy Grail tapestries by Morris & Co. and a grand piano adorned by Burne-Jones, enrich the display. Additionally, the exhibition features bronzes by leaders of the “New Sculpture” movement and proto-Decadent works by Charles Ricketts and Aubrey Beardsley.
Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and John Henry Dearle (designers), Holy Grail Tapestries: The Arming of the Knights (1890). Private collection.
Trippi describes the exhibition’s display of Burne-Jones’ work, set in the church’s dining room, as “magical.”
“You look up and see a gorgeous medieval painting of flowers and leaves on the church’s ceiling, and you look down ahead of you and see Burne-Jones’ 19th-century paintings of flowers and leaves,” he said. On one wall of the room, a painting by Mantegna and another by Bellini are on display. In a vitrine, a drawing by Michelangelo can be found. Between all these works, the Burne-Jones Pre-Raphaelite paintings hang, in flirtation with the works of the old Italian masters. “It’s a love affair, really,” he says.
A view of the Edward Burne-Jones room, described by co-curator Peter Trippi as “a love affair.” Photo: Emanuele Rambaldi
The grand finale of the exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the Pre-Raphaelite legacy through 19th- and early 20th-century paintings by Italian artists including Adolfo de Carolis, Giovanni Costa, Giulio Aristide Sartorio, and Filadelfo Simi.
“Pre-Raphaelites: Modern Renaissance” is organized by the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì in collaboration with the Municipality of Forlì. The Italian catalogue is published by Dario Cimorelli Editore (Milan).
A view of the “Pre-Raphaelites: Modern Renaissance” exhibition at the Museo Civico San Domenico in Italy. photo: Emanuele Rambaldi.
“Pre-Raphaelites: Modern Renaissance” is on view at the San Domenico Museum in Forlì, Italy, through June 30, 2024.
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The artist behind the current exhibition at The Untitled Space exists only in theory. “SKYE CLEARY NEVER GETS OLD” (through March 29) presents 20 paintings, purportedly by one Skye Cleary, a character created by performance artist Lisa Levy and painter Sharilyn Neidhart, and who takes the form of a sex doll.
Levy has devised an in-depth origin story for Skye—her student artist days, daddy issues, and all—a tale animated by previous installations at Arcade Projects and SPRING/BREAK. Oversized Polaroid photos shot by photographer Meryl Meister, included in the new show, follow Skye on a night-out, fleshing out her existence. Levy told me that people passing by had thought Skye was a real person.
Skye Cleary “working” at famed Brooklyn strip club Pumps. Photo: Reven T.C. Wurman.
Because she’s made of silicone, Skye Cleary will literally never get old—but, in Levy’s saga, she does age. Skye, now 28, has finished her MFA. This is her first exhibition centered on her artwork alone. Each series that Levy and Neidhardt paint through Skye is structured like an ad campaign, drawing on Levy’s years in the industry. Neidhart paints the scenes, and Levy devises the text.
“They’re much bigger, more formal paintings,” Levy said of their latest works. “My text has gotten a lot better, much more emotional.” Still, there’s little to no subtlety on view—just a lot of skin, attitude, and hustling.
Skye Cleary, The Patrons (2022). Courtesy of Lisa Levy
Legend has it that Skye grew up in rural Pennsylvania and moved to New York in 2016 to study at SVA, where she started stripping. “I could earn three times the money as an exotic dancer than I could working at a retail or art job,” Skye’s statement for this show explained. “That gave me what I wanted most, more studio time.”
Levy told me that, thus far, Skye has felt obligated to keep her side gig separate from her art career, but Skye’s statement claims these works critique such self-censorship. “It’s funny when you point out the obvious,” her statement concluded.
Skye Cleary, My Body My Choice (2023). Courtesy of Lisa Levy
Levy received the physical Skye in 2018 from Danielle Knafo, a psychoanalyst and renowned expert in men who date sex dolls. Levy first embraced her interest in psychology in 2001, when she became a quasi-analyst and started taking clients on stage at live improv comedy shows. Just a few years before acquiring Skye, Levy staged a performance where she mocked Marina Abramović by sitting on a toilet in an art gallery for two days. “It really bothered me that Marina Abramović put herself in a godlike position,” Levy said. “It’s so symbolic of what’s wrong with the art world, that artists are somehow more divine.”
Not long after, Levy found herself contemplating the sexual currency that young women hold. She wants girls today to seize their power, because she didn’t. “My best friend would be sleeping with the creative director and I’d be [working] all night,” Levy recounted of her days in the advertising industry. “A lot of women would be manipulating men and I was frustrated that I couldn’t do it, or that I wasn’t attractive enough. And I don’t even think looks have that much to do with it.”
After exchanging emails, Knafo offered Levy a doll she had on hand, and Levy set out for Long Island to get Skye.
Skye Cleary, Price Available Upon Request (2023). Courtesy of Lisa Levy
While stars from Mae West to Meghan Thee Stallion have built careers around playing men for money, wider society still has a hard time facing its oldest profession. Levy—and Skye—believe that’s because awareness would leave young women with lots of power, which society currently controls through shame. Women “need to own it, and use it how they want to use it,” Levy reflected.
Levy is reclaiming her own power through Skye, who’s using her body to get men to “empty their pockets,” as Levy puts it—and also as an avenue to have fun for herself and enjoy life. Levy foresees more photoshoots in Skye’s future. She hired the Spa Man Global art collective to party with Skye in a private room at Bushwick hotspot House of Yes while Meisler snapped the photos in this show. Much like Levy, the young actors started treating Skye like a real being. As artificial intelligence encourages the art world to ask what an artist actually is, Levy and Neidhardt are helping a truly objectified women find her voice.
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Chalk up another landmark in the growing recognition of the great Surrealist artist Remedios Varo. She will soon have her first New York exhibition in decades, at the same moment that her works are entering new museum collections.
“A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings” will be not only her first New York solo show in nearly 40 years, but also the first exhibition devoted to her work in the medium. The show is part of a series of “offsite” exhibitions that San Francisco dealer Wendi Norris has staged, and will take place at Adler Beatty Gallery, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The show coincides with the acquisition of the artist’s works by two major museums, the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; in each case, they are the first examples by Varo to enter their collections. Scotland will add Encounter (1959), which is also the first Varo painting to enter a European museum’s holdings, while the D.C. museum has acquired Banqueros en acción (Bankers in action) (1962), and a preparatory drawing. Varo completed only about 100 paintings in her lifetime, and most of them are off the market, now hanging in the museums of her adopted homeland of Mexico. 
Remedios Varo, study for Armonía (ca. 1956). Courtesy Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
“I often use the word ‘indelible’ to describe the work of Remedios Varo—indelible because of her narrative imaginary and indelible because of her mastery,” Norris said. “Varo’s drawings reveal the intimacies behind this imaginary and mastery of hers.
“I can think of no greater testament to Varo’s legacy than to have a masterful oil and its preparatory drawing in the collection of one of the most frequented museums in the world—the National Gallery of Art in D.C.!” she said. “The National Galleries of Scotland has built one of the most important collections and archives of Surrealism, and they are proudly on the forefront of ensuring that female artists are rightfully taking their place alongside their modern male peers.”
Tightly focused, “A Visionary Line” consists of just nine works on paper, all coming from the collection of her doctor. It includes studies for works that now reside in museums around the globe, from El Flautista in the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City to Tailleur pour Dames (1957), from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Remedios Varo, Encounter (1959). Photo: Nick Mailer. Courtesy National Galleries of Scotland.
The artist has truly come into her own in recent years as historians and museums have plumbed the contributions to the Surrealist movement of women such as Varo and Leonora Carrington. She had a prominent place in the 59th Venice Biennale exhibition, “The Milk of Dreams” in 2022, and she was the subject of the major exhibition, “Remedios Varo: Science Fictions,” at the Art Institute of Chicago last year, when Tribune critic Lori Waxman called her “the most extraordinary Surrealist you’ve never even heard of.”
International audiences are also getting a chance to see Varo’s work, which is featured in the touring exhibition, “IMAGINE! 100 Years of International Surrealism.” That show recently opened at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and travels to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“A Visionary Line: Remedios Varo Drawings” will be on view at Gallery Wendi Norris in collaboration with Adler Beatty, 34 E 69th St, New York, from May 8 through June 1.
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The 20 or so images now featured in Daniel Arsham’s first photography exhibition were never meant for our eyes. The sculptor had shot these photos purely for pleasure—amassing thousands upon thousands of them over three decades—never intending to put them on view. “I never thought about showing my photography,” he told me. “It was just what I was drawn to.” 
We’re walking through “Phases” at Fotografiska New York, for which Arsham has disgorged his extensive archive, now numbering about 200,000 images across negatives and hard drives. “I had some crazy stuff that I had forgotten about,” he said. The mostly black-and-white photos in the show are thematically grouped: cityscapes in one section, portraits in another, and close-ups of birds in yet another.
Installation view of “Daniel Arsham: Phases” at Fotografiska New York. Photo: Min Chen.
On one wall hangs a series of long exposures of the night sky, their stars crystal clear. Arsham explained that he shot some of these with the digital Leica M9 until a software update curtailed the shutter speed on bulb mode (he even fired off an email to the company about the issue). “So, I have now gone back to analog for that,” he told me, pointing to one photograph. “I think this exposure is, like, three minutes. You can even see the stars moving.” 
This meticulously technical, almost geeky, approach to photography is long nurtured. Arsham received his first camera, a Pentax K1000, at age 11, a gift from his grandfather, who also taught him the basics of focus, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. It launched a steady, lifelong pursuit that has run alongside his sculptural practice, built on his signature “eroded” forms.
Installation view of “Daniel Arsham: Phases” at Fotografiska New York. Photo: Min Chen.
But while a handful of Arsham’s sculptures are dotted throughout the exhibition, he sees his photography work as separate. “It feels so different,” he said. “When I’m in the studio, I’m often working towards an exhibition and I’m creating a body of work with an intention around the full experience of the show. In this case [of photography], it’s more just playing.” 
Still, the motifs in Arsham’s photographs do echo elements of his sculptures. One can see how his knack for dramatic framing and his eye for negative space might come into play in his studio. There’s even a smattering of photographs of sculptures, including one of the Winged Victory of Samothrace installed at the Louvre in Paris, each of them framed to emphasize their scale or textures.
Installation view of “Daniel Arsham: Phases” at Fotografiska New York. Photo: Min Chen.
The exhibition is accompanied by the hardcover volume Daniel Arsham: Photographer—Arsham’s first photography book—its vast contents spanning street scenes, self-portraits, nature shots, casual snaps, and far more than is included in the show. Flipping through it, he points out various images: one of a sunrise as seen through some fog in Battery Park City where he once resided, a darkly silhouetted portrait of A$AP Rocky, and a perspective view of the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
Viewed as a body of work, one gets the sense that photography is as much a creative outlet as it is a personal project for Arsham. The book is dedicated to his late grandfather and its introduction, penned by the artist, discusses “using a camera to both document and understand life.” 
Installation view of “Daniel Arsham: Phases” at Fotografiska New York, with wall text handwritten by Daniel Arsham. Photo: Min Chen.
As he does in the book’s introduction, Arsham told me about receiving his first camera and turning it on the Miami suburb he grew up in. “The houses were basically the same, but the landscaping was different. People would paint their doors different colors and they had different door knockers,” he said. “So, I took photos of all the doors in the neighborhood—they’re all the same but they’re all different.” 
He lost those images when Hurricane Andrew struck the neighborhood, wrecking his family’s home. What remained, however, was a photograph of a young Arsham posing alongside his beloved Pentax.
“It’s cool,” he said, showing me the image on the last page of Photographer. “I never thought that I would ever get to do an exhibition like this.”
“Phases” is on view at Fotografiska, 281 Park Ave South, New York, through June 14. 
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Chiara Camoni believes that there are two kinds of artists. There are “those who do not touch matter,” she says, “and those who cannot do without it.”
“I belong to this second group,” Camoni adds. That feels apparent when looking at her highly sensual works, rich organic matter mixes with tactile ceramics. Her carefully conceived sculptures explore the meeting point between domestic design and the natural world: vibrant flowers, colorful vegetation, and anthromorphized forms meet in energetic installations, which are created via her instinctive gestures.
The Italian artist also draws and makes vegetable prints; she has previously worked on expansive films. Much of this range is on view in “Call and gather. Sisters. Moths and flame twisters. Lioness bones, snakes and stones,” her new exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, the largest body of work ever shown by the artist.
The exhibition’s radial floor design is inspired by Italy’s late Renaissance gardens and ancient amphitheaters, inviting viewers to wander through its various pathways or linger for a moment among individual works.
Photo: Arthur Pequin
“When I entered the Shed space at Pirelli HangarBicocca, I immediately felt the need to seek its center, then to open the doors to let the light in,” Camoni tells me in an interview. “At that point, I began to relate to the space in its entirety. Without raising walls, I drew corridors, rooms, environments. Images of archaeological sites and gardens came in, and we know that weeds, shrubs, and wild vegetation happily grow where there are ruins.”
Her Butterfly Vases (2020–22) challenge the imagined line between art and craft and are made using foraged plants. They are glazed with sand collected from local rivers and the iridescent ashes of flowers, reimagining Egyptian canopic jars, ancient food storage earthenware, and antique decorative vases.
The show also features the artist’s human-sized Sisters (2017–23), which change form through the duration of an exhibition. Some, for example, are made of wax which gradually melts, creating a constantly evolving form.
Chiara Camoni’s Sister, (2022). Installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Produced by Biennale Gherdëina. Courtesy the artist; SpazioA, Pistoia, and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
“I work by addressing monumentality not in terms of size, but rather in poignancy, density, reiteration of gestures, temporal duration,” Camoni says. “The Sisters are monumental figures, although they are on a human scale. They are sculptures that live in change, filled with themselves, composed of thousands of small pieces of hand-molded terracotta. They configure themselves differently each time: they come, they show off, and then they are ready to disappear again!”
Camoni’s ceramics mirror the inherently individual nature of her organic matter. They are rustic, asymmetrical, and carry the various marks and scars left by the artist’s hand. “I believe they come from an unconscious, emotional zone and do not follow the linear progression of rational thought,” she adds.
Chiara Camoni’s “Call and gather. Sisters. Moths and flame twisters. Lioness bones, snakes and stones.” Exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, (2024). Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
Camoni has a highly collaborative process with nature, but also with friends and family who take part in creative workshops. “Much of my work originates at home or in the garden, conditioned by the weather and climate, as well as the surrounding sounds and voices,” she says. “I experience the wonder, the encounter with the artwork, which I consider a subject in its own right, that demands an active relationship.”
She began working together with her grandmother, Ines Bassanetti, early in her artistic practice in 2002. Bassanetti went on to become her assistant, leading to an unusually close familial artistic bond. Her grandmother created a body of plant and animal drawings with Camoni, part of La Grande Madre series. More recently, the artist invited friends and collaborators to choose books and memorabilia for Carrozzone (2021), an installation taking the form of a traditional wagon.
Chiara Camoni’s “Call and gather. Sisters. Moths and flame twisters. Lioness bones, snakes and stones.” Exhibition view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, (2024). Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, MilanPhoto Agostino Osio
“I believe that authorship can be opened to other people,” she notes. “I like to bypass a certain technical competence, to welcome unexpected deviations. I also feel that around the artworks in the before and after—in the creative moment that precedes them and in the fruition and activation that follows—moments of intensity, little epiphanies coagulate. If I am not alone, if there is someone with me who sees and feels all this, then they really exist.”
Many of the items used in the artist’s work—from plants to ashes, sand, and soil—are collected from her surroundings. It is important to her that they come from her everyday experience, and she often transforms original materials in radical ways, sometimes burning or combining, modeling or sorting them. While she roots her practice within ancestral and archaic traditions, she also references a sense of collapsing time with her materials.
Chiara Camoni’s Dogs (Bruno and Tre), (2024). Installation view at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Produced by Pirelli HangarBicocca. Courtesy the artist; SpazioA, Pistoia, and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. Photo: Agostino Osio
“Ceramics, stone, or wood are as contemporary to us as a smartphone,” she says. “It all starts with a walk, which can also take place in a city; I collect flowers, leaves, wild herbs and, thanks to the juices they release on the fabric, these figures ‘arrive.’ I consider them to be spirits hidden behind the first level of reality, as we see it.”
Camoni hopes her works create an embodied experience for the viewer, which goes beyond the visual. “This exhibition is informed with energy, which I hope will be felt,” she notes. “There is a vibration running through it all, moving in the snakes slithering low to the ground, rising in the more vertical figures, winding up and down. There are so many eyes, looking everywhere, crossing the audience’s gazes but also looking at each other…”

“Call and gather. Sisters. Moths and flame twisters. Lioness bones, snakes and stones” is on view at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, through July 21, 2024.

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