The Giovanni Bonelli gallery presents a series of beautiful works by Palermo-based artist Fulvio Di Piazza with a solo exhibition entitled “Due Babele”, recently inaugurated at its Milan location and open until November 30, 2025. Sicilian artist (born in 1969), he was one of the founders of the so-called “New School of Palermo” and has several international exhibitions to his credit, including one at Jonathan Levine in New York in 2017 and at the Institute of Culture in Los Angeles in 2014. In his painting, it is easy to find a transposition of intertwining visions, creating the visual and illusory effect of a world parallel to ours, where, with vivid and cybernetic colors, the artist marks his personal political statements. One could say that his landscapes are devoid of the force of gravity. They are suspended, hovering with fluorescent, luminous colors capable of surprising the viewer’s gaze.
Fulvio Di Piazza, overall view of the exhibition “Due Babele” at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli. Photo by CasonatoMR, courtesy Galleria Giovanni Bonelli
With these thirteen painted works on display, in addition to some sketches, Di Piazza creates luminous portals in a fantasy style, with a dual perception of the world – indeed multiple, to use a Calvinian category. While some of his works are slow and suspended, others are silent and gravitational. In particular, in “Madre” (Mother) (from 2025), the idea of primordial matter is represented by an unusual hyena, which is not reassuring and protective, but strong, vigorous, and rooted in earthly matter. Or another work, called “Madre” (also from 2025), refers to a camel with monstrous features and eyes of magmatic red color, and one sees a smoking peak on the rear part of the animal, in place of the dunes. A singular camel that is in itself already a rocky continent despite the sense of evanescence from his use of color.
Fulvio Di Piazza, “Green Babel”, oil on canvas, 2025. Courtesy Galleria Giovanni Bonelli
From earthly matter, his pictorial leap moves toward another, dystopian version of the world. The title “Due Babele” is certainly no coincidence – that is, the antonomastic use of the ancient city of Babel. In this regard, the artist states that the «exhibition develops around two large works of equal format representing two different towers of Babel. The first, “Francis Babel”, is characterized by architectural elements of various styles. The forms are precarious, decadent, and the presence of flags of various nationalities reduced to tatters is an evident metaphor for the negation of utopias. The second Babel is green, characterized by primordial natural forms that become architectures, and suggests a return to a primordial and wild dimension that does not contemplate human presence».
Fulvio Di Piazza, “Madre”, oil on canvas, 2025. Courtesy Galleria Giovanni Bonelli
Indeed, Fulvio Di Piazza is interested in reflecting on the meaning of this ancient city to create a syntactic and semantic connection in relation to the historical present. But his homage to animals is significant, to which he dedicates the enchantment of his painting, depicting them in the foreground in shades of blue and violet, with cold and powerful tones. Enormous is his capacity to evoke landscapes that seem to belong to the future or to some galactic constellation, like the work “Green Babel”. The towers of Babel also stand out, recalling the dynamism of Baroque twisted columns and abundantly loaded. One, “Francis Babel”: full of color and various details like the fallen and crumpled flags of Italy, France, Germany, and Europe with the idea of a crumbled humanity, in an implacable motion that is no longer in communication with heaven, with the divine. It is a torsion of history that bends upon itself under a motion that is inexorable.
Fulvio Di Piazza, “Franci Babel”, oil on canvas, 2025. Courtesy Galleria Giovanni Bonelli
However, this representation does not have dark tones: it is entrusted to strong chromatic schemes, with apocalyptic references and a meaning closer to mysticism and the Dionysian. Perhaps a second Babel will be able to exempt itself from the history of peoples, and this is indeed the case with his “Green Babel”, with a reachable sky and a vision dominated by Nature. But no divine is present anymore in his painting, where the impetus of nature is teeming and strong, driven by an earthly maternity that creates, transforms, and makes the things of the world turn even without touching the sky. Even with the fall of humanity, replaced by the becoming of the naturalistic and botanical world. Of a botany that has become living poetry.
Info:
Fulvio Di Piazza, Due Babele
23.10 – 30.11. 2025
Galleria Giovanni Bonelli
via Luigi Porro Lambertenghi 6, Milano
opening hours: 11.00/19.00
www.galleriagiovannibonelli.com
Through art she feels the need to get closer to nature, deciding to create an artistic residence on Etna as a “refuge for contemporary art” for artists and scholars. Thus was born Nake artistic residence. She won the Responsible Etna Award 2015. In 2017, she was invited to the Sala Zuccari, Senate of the Republic, as an art critic. She writes for Italian and foreign artists. Curator of the first Museum of Contemporary Art of Etna and of the “Contemporary Etna” project.
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