The Street Levels Gallery in Florence presents “Ecce Homo, Ecce Eva (Those who remember)”, Ache77’s first solo exhibition, one of the most intense and recognizable voices in the Italian urban art. Until January 11, 2026, the spaces in Melegnano Street 4R will house more than fifty unpublished works, specifically created for the occasion: a collection of forty-four archetypes that embody a collective rite, a celebration of memory, face and presence. The artist, born in 1991 in Romania and grown in Florence, has decided to tell the story of what is deeper and more authentic within a society where the line between real and false, seems blurred now. In this direction, the artist proposes to the audience a return to the human through, a visual and symbolic path that invites them to meet the other, and inevitably themselves, without any filters.
Ache77, “Ecce Homo, Ecce Eva (Those who remember)”, 2025, installation view, ph. Leonardo Chiarabini courtesy Street Levels Gallery, 2025
«The title – as the artist explains – comes from the idea that every face we encounter, including our own, carries within it a story greater than the personal biography. “Ecce Homo” and “Ecce Eva” are not two separate figures, but two ways of saying: Here is the human being. Here is its light. Here is his shadow. Here you are. I chose this title because we live in a time when human beings are often hidden, fragmented or represented only in their usefulness. I wanted to bring it back to the center: the face as a sacred place of mutual recognition».
Ache77, “Ecce Homo, Ecce Eva (Those who remember)”, 2025, installation view, ph. Leonardo Chiarabini courtesy Street Levels Gallery, 2025
The exhibition path evokes a stroll through an ancient picture gallery adorned with numerous portraits, representing archetypes, possibilities and mirrors. They are not portraits of someone, but portraits of everyone. The face, the element most explored by the artist, is stripped of its connotation: the person’s face is understood as the point at which the invisible becomes visible, where the hidden is revealed, where each story is contained in the individual particles that compose people’s physiognomies. To provide the viewer with his own version, Ache77 decides to use as his artistic medium open spray cans, rust, metal foil, scratches, and gold, all elements that undergo and record the incessant passage of time, just like our faces.
Ache77, “Ecce Homo, Ecce Eva (Those who remember)”, 2025, installation view, ph. Leonardo Chiarabini courtesy Street Levels Gallery, 2025
The surfaces, marked by wear and tear and gesture, welcome faces that are emotional gateways, figures emerging from the street to return to the community, in a constant tension between the sacred and the everyday, shadow and light, absence and revelation. The artist carefully investigates the face: it is not to be understood as a collection of parts (nose, mouth, eyes, etc.) but rather as a formula and, at the same time, a creative synthesis of an elaborate interior process. The faces portrayed by Ache77 are nothing more than mirrors in which one can find oneself. To best convey the feelings and emotions experienced by the protagonists, the artist used a frontal and close-up view, similar, for example, to the cinematic technique adopted during the 1920s by French theorist and director Jean Epstein, according to whom the essence of the close-up constitutes a central element for the narrative and the communication of feelings. The exhibition, curated by Street Levels Gallery, is conceived as a collective ritual rather than a simple display.
Info:
Ache77, “Ecce Homo, Ecce Eva (Those who remember)”
14/11/2025 – 11/ 01/2026
Street Levels Gallery
via Melegnano 4 R, Firenze
www.streetlevelsgallery.com
Carlotta Thione (Cuorgnè, 1999), is a Contemporary Art Historian and editorial collaborator of several magazines. She is also the author of texts and critical insights for exhibitions and moderator of cultural events. Her interests focus not only on contemporary art, but also on Italian songwriting.
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