The exhibition Converging Trajectories: Ettore Spalletti meets Gino De Dominicis and Franz West explores the points of contact between artists who, despite working with different languages, shared a vision of art as a total experience. Moving across both poetic and historiographic dimensions, the project foregrounds the connection between these figures and the city of Pescara, a vibrant center of experimentation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Alongside Galleria Vistamare, which presents the exhibition at its Milan venue, the narrative also recalls Ettore Spalletti’s brother Vittoriano, an impassioned collector, and Mario Pieroni, who staged an early encounter between the artist from Cappelle sul Tavo and Gino De Dominicis at his Roman gallery in 1969.

“Converging trajectories: Ettore Spalletti meets Gino De Dominicis and Franz West”, installation view, Vistamare Milano, 2026. Courtesy Vistamare Milano/Pescara. Photo by Alto Piano – Agostino Osio

Ettore Spalletti’s works, at once ethereal and tactile, shape the space while simultaneously lightening it, giving it a renewed, breathing presence. His monochromes converse with the metaphysical suspension of De Dominicis’ works, evoking a sense of suspended time. Franz West enters this dialogue with the physicality of his papier-mâché pieces, which ironically occupy the threshold between sculpture and everyday object, inviting the viewers into both material and psychological engagement. Spalletti’s works, like shifting geometries of infinity, give form to their surroundings, blending into and diffusing within the environment. Their colors suggest an immaterial spatiality, an almost intangible reality. His monochromes, like Mediterranean elegies, create spaces for reflection, stillness and pray, where viewers may lose themselves, drift and rise with extraordinary lightness.

Ettore Spalletti, “Calma”, 2016. Color impasto on board, gold leaf, cm 150 x 150. Courtesy Vistamare Milano/Pescara. Photo by Alto Piano – Agostino Osio

In Calma (2016), a golden ray taps a field of luminous blue. The image calls to mind the bather Palomar contemplating the sword of sunlight flashing across the sea’s surface. As the reader follows Palomar in his reflections on time, on the world before him and the far vaster one to come, thought returns to Spalletti, who in an interview on La Repubblica remarked: “You see, I have erased time […] old works are like new ones; it has been this way for forty years. When time no longer exists, you no longer need to strive to be present”^[1]. In this light, the golden blade of Calma becomes the sun’s sword.

“Converging trajectories: Ettore Spalletti meets Gino De Dominicis and Franz West”, installation view, Vistamare Milano, 2026. Courtesy Vistamare Milano/Pescara. Photo by Alto Piano – Agostino Osio

Time and space gradually open onto a meditation on mortality and immortality. On one side stand Spalletti’s works, which, as he maintained, ultimately make themselves, no longer requiring his intervention; on the other, De Dominicis’s balanced rod, cutting the space around it. The dart, recurring in his installations, sometimes appears alongside the circle and the square, forms equally central to Spalletti’s sculptural objects: archetypes always steeped in color. Like alien presences, De Dominicis’s objects confront the viewer with the endurance of time. Language, for him, is meant to fix both instant and motion, as in Palla di gomma (caduta da 2 metri), captured in the split second before its rebound. The interplay of image and word is equally central to West’s practice, shaped by a dialogue between psychoanalytic thought and Viennese literary experimentation. In different ways, West shares with Spalletti and De Dominicis the ability to suspend time.

“Converging trajectories: Ettore Spalletti meets Gino De Dominicis and Franz West”, installation view, Vistamare Milano, 2026. Courtesy Vistamare Milano/Pescara. Photo by Alto Piano – Agostino Osio. On the monitor: Berhard Riff, “Capri/Capra”, 1993. Video, colour, 29 min. 40 sec., courtesy Berhard Riff

Spalletti achieves this through the slow and meticulous processes of selecting, applying and polishing color, but also in works such as the Salle des départs at the Hôpital Raymond-Poincaré in Garches, where color and light soften and humanize the experience of mourning. The work underscores contemporary art’s responsibility toward space, a concern that also surfaces in West’s practice, as in Eo Ipso (1987). De Dominicis, for his part, persistently questioned the relationship between immortality and time, seeking to seize and eternalize the instant. This inquiry engages space, time and the body, from Seconda Soluzione d’Immortalità (l’Universo è immobile) (1972), in which he searched for a young man who retained a childlike appearance, to the skeleton presented at L’Attico in 1970 for the exhibition Fine dell’Alchimia, curated by Maurizio Calvesi. Through the relational and functional exchange between body and space, West ultimately demonstrated how art may also emerge from pause, rest and even boredom. Through the dematerialization of the artwork, the reduction of the image and an architectural interplay of form, color and light, the exhibition invites the viewers to slow down, to reflect, to situate themselves physically and spiritually within space and time, and simply breathe.

^[1] Gregorio Botta, “Spalletti: arte come preghiera”, p. 33, domenica 16 luglio 2017.

Info:

Converging Trajectories: Ettore Spalletti meets Gino De Dominicis and Franz West
29/01/2026 – 28/03/2026
Thursday – Saturday: 10.30 – 19.00
Galleria Vistamare
Via Spontini, 8 – Milano
vistamare.com

Lorenzo Rebosio

After graduating in Economics and Management of Cultural Heritage, he earned a master’s degree in Art History. Writing is a way to engage directly with artists’ research, gaining in-depth knowledge of them, and bringing out the layers of their language. The work of art responds to an intimate, shared and complex code that requires constant exploration and dialogue.