From May 29 to July 31, 2025, the group exhibition Represented by will be held in Florence at Galleria La Fonderia. From the opening, the research of the represented artists was able to speak. The subjectively autonomous intents, extremely diverse, engaged in a suggestive dialogue, creating a perceptible underlying coherence.
AA.VV., “Represented by”, installation view at Galleria La Fonderia, Firenze (Giuseppe Barilaro, “L’ultima scelta di Dio”, 2024, Marco Ferri, “Le Ermetriche”, 2019, Filippo Cigni, “Al precipitar di Luna”, 2025), photo © Fabio Bernardini, courtesy Galleria La Fonderia
At first glance, the title Represented by, from a curatorial point of view, may appear elusive within a group exhibition that is anything but monotonous or monothematic. Intentionally, instead, it alludes to the contemporary habit of overwriting a concept of exhibition that brings together multiple expressions and visual languages. An important dynamic for expanding visibility, stimulating interest and promoting the ideas behind a collective operation in today’s artistic landscape. On the other hand, it can become ineffective when considering authorial claims. The “mania for curatorial protagonism” has often been denounced as the overshadowing of primary actors and actresses by who elevate themselves to the role of “creative producers”.
AA.VV., “Represented by”, installation view at Galleria La Fonderia, Firenze (Monograff, “Anfora”, 2025, Leopoldo Innocenti, “Monte Giovi”, 2025), photo © Fabio Bernardini, courtesy Galleria La Fonderia
In smaller cultural realities, the awareness and responsibility of the implications of an exhibition project extend to every subject involved, crossing the boundaries of specialization. Therefore, Represented by is more than a title: it becomes a statement and an invitation to reflect on the role of representation in the contemporary art system. It asks what it means today, for artists, to be represented and what it entails, for a gallery, to take care of an artist’s work. Despite Florence’s difficult market, gallerist Mannini uses his space as a place where individual research can be refined, stimulated and supported. The exhibition project of Galleria La Fonderia goes beyond the role of promoting and enhancing the work of the artists. It was born with the will to become a space for dialogue, where active connections can be built between audience and artist, as well as among artists, in order to stimulate an exchange of knowledge, practices and insights useful to the development of contemporary creativity. Works by established artists such as Claudio Cionini, Federico Ferrarini, Marco Ferri and Roberto Ghezzi are joined with those of emerging and mid-career artists such as Giuseppe Barilaro, Filippo Cigni, Leopoldo Innocenti, Monograff and Leonardo Moretti.
AA.VV., “Represented by”, installation view at Galleria La Fonderia, Firenze (Leonardo Moretti, “Untitled (Crittografie)”, Filippo Cigni, “De Occultae Veneris”, 2025, Giuseppe Barilaro, “La cortigiana (o Venere contemporanea)”, 2025), photo © Fabio Bernardini, courtesy Galleria La Fonderia
The relationships established between the works are varied, speaking of abstract, gestural, figurative, or conceptual approaches. Upon entering, the gaze is led toward the back wall, where a work from Ferri’s Ermetriche series projects us into the macrocosmic dimension of nature and into the enigmatic one of matter. The work leaves an imaginative space to venture into the dialogue between layers of color, connective threads, and primary forms. A geometric-visual metric emerges and its frequency meets the sign-based grammar of Moretti, and the mystical elegance of the Stargates: Ferrarini’s cosmological archetypes. The former triggers in the viewer a connection with their emotional dimension; the latter proposes concentric and mandalic elements whose core becomes a portal of energy, a matrix of universal vibrations. The form and the material itself awaken the observer’s inner awareness.
AA.VV., “Represented by”, installation view at Galleria La Fonderia, Firenze (Roberto Ghezzi, “Naturografia di fiume (Tevere)”, 2025, Federico Ferrarini, “Stonestar machine 02”, 2025), photo © Fabio Bernardini, courtesy Galleria La Fonderia
Innocenti’s paintings are vehicles for another dimension. Restless human figures are placed among dreamlike landscape fragments and symbolic objects, forming the faded and suspended surface of the psyche. It is about evoking an image without manifesting it, keeping it in that atmospheric limbo between the concrete and the abstract. Experimenting with the layering of new supports (metal meshes, scenic fabric, or mosquito nets), Monograff brings to light a vase, giving it an ancient and allegorical value. Barilaro on the other hand, reactivates manual work as a poetic gesture of resistance. On the panel, an intimate yet bulimic action unfolds, through the pictorial gesture, the cutting, and the burning. The faces of the portrayed subjects are concealed to guard the secret of a relationship from gazes that are at times too indiscreet.
AA.VV., “Represented by”, installation view at Galleria La Fonderia, Firenze (Claudio Cionini, “AFO 4”, 2025, acrilico su tela, 100 x 120 cm), photo © Fabio Bernardini, courtesy Galleria La Fonderia
Attention to matter then becomes deeper and more conceptual. Ghezzi’s Naturografia and pinhole photography are the result of patient dedication. They were produced through monitoring the action of atmospheric phenomena on the painting support. It’s more than mediation, it’s a testimony. Cigni, instead, investigates the alchemical and symbolic properties of the substances he uses. Each is chosen to establish a meaningful relationship within the work, reformulating images from Christian or mythological tradition. The account of the only two installations allows us to understand the autonomous power of natural substances. Cionini’s painting of an industrial landscape diverges from the general exhibition atmosphere, although it manages to create rarefied and evocative settings, reconstructed from mnemonic suggestions.
AAA.VV., “Represented by”, installation view at Galleria La Fonderia, Firenze (Filippo Cigni, “Al precipitar di Luna”, 2025, 2025, Roberto Ghezzi, “Gli occhi della montagna”, 2024, Filippo Cigni, Annunciazione II, 2025), photo © Fabio Bernardini, courtesy Galleria La Fonderia
Although the exhibition title highlights the role of the gallery space, it’s not the absolute protagonist. The project was conceived to give the microphone to the voices of nine contemporary artists. Each of them, in a heterogeneous way, expressed the desire to transcend the limits of the individual gesture to connect with something greater: the environment, time, the cosmos, the unconscious, myth and matter itself.
Elisa Perissinotti
Info:
AA.VV. Represented by
29/05/2025 – 31/07/2025
Galleria La Fonderia
Via della Fonderia 42R, Firenze
Tue-Fri: 10am-1pm 3.30pm-7.30pm | Sat 10am-1pm
www.galleriafonderia.com
is a contemporary art magazine since 1980
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