Untitled Art Fair

Levi van Veluw was born in the Dutch town of Hoevelaken in 1985 and studied at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem. He lives and works in Amsterdam. Since graduating in 2007, he has produced multi- disciplinary works that spans scenographic installations, photographs, videos, sculptures and drawings. Van Veluw bases his practice around the idea of an alternate reality, creating a visual laboratory where both order and chaos are present. The artist has extensively investigated the relativity of matter and draws on scientific theories and physics to approach various existential dilemmas. His dark and sensory installations encourage the viewer to reflect on the development of a new knowledge, stemming from the desire for a regulated universe, while acknowledging the rational impossibility of total control.

Among his personal recent exhibitions we remind: Videocittà Rome, Italy (2021); Eduardo Secci, Florence, Italy (2020); Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede,The Netherlands (2020); Praz-Delavallade, Paris (2020); Het HEM, Zaandam, The Netherlands (2020); Tenuta Dello Scompiglio, Lucca, Italy (2019); Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan, France (2018); La Galerie Particulière, Paris (2017); Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam (2019); Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery, London (2016). Among group shows we remind: Museo Kranenburgh, Bergen, The Netherlands (2017); labellisée Normandie Impressonniste, Jumièges, France (2016); Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, the Netherlands (2016); Maddox Arts, London (2015). Van Veluw’s works have also been widely shown at international art fairs such as Zona Maco (2018); The Armory Show, New York (2017); Art Brussels (2016); Chicago Art Fair (2016); Volta Basel (2012) and the Barcelona Loop Fair Barcelona (2014). The work of Levi Veluw has been exhibited internationally in leading museums and institutions, and is included in both public and private collections, including the Borusan Contemporary Collection, Caldic Collection, Ekard Collection and KPMG Art Collection.

Alin Bozbiciu is a young, talented artist representing the figurative painting of the School of Cluj in Rumania. He excels in the medium of painting in all its facets. A soft wide brush stroke and abundant use of paint are characteristic for his style. The palette roams on the spectrum of earth colors and grisaille hues with very rare color outbursts.

The artist is passionate about subjects of his own private surrounding and the representation of familiar or even related individuals. Animals, especially dogs, star in many of his paintings. The subjects are set in private, intimate poses usually alone and seemingly unobserved. Often their gaze is turned to the floor, their bodies crouched or bent which conveys a feeling of the portrayed people being abandoned or immersed in private thoughts. The dogs reinforce the intimacy of the moment and create an emotional link between the person in the picture and the viewer. After further contemplation, one sometimes spots details in the pictures that do imply the presence of others.

Bozbiciu is dedicated to his subjects in constant repetition, serial work is a main method of his oeuvre. It allows him to study his subjects in different formats and variations, eliminating the clichés of content and representation. This method forces the viewer to look closer in order to distinguish the motives. This way Bozbiciu questions and challenges our perception of images. Despite his painting being figurative it is also extremely aloof only hinting at things instead of being explicit. Much is left ambiguous and open for interpretation or associations of the viewer. His big brush strokes are a tool to convey emotions and sensuality not enunciate content. Hence his work demands to be looked at again and again in order to be seen. They reveal their chore qualities when met with devotion.

Daria Dmytrenko (1993, Dnipropetrovsk, Ucraina) vive e lavora a Venezia. Dopo la prima formazione artistica a Dnipropetrovsk, ha frequentato i corsi di pittura presso l’Accademia Nazionale di Arti Visive e Architettura di Kiev (2012-15) e si è diplomata all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia nel 2021. Attraverso la pittura, l’artista esplora l’espressione visiva del subconscio, utilizzando gli impulsi intuitivi come strumento per far emergere i ricordi più profondi e trasformarli in composizione. Tra le mostre in cui sono state esposte le sue opere: Journey to the center of the mind, Stems (Paris, 2024) What’s behind the gloom, Setareh (Düsseldorf, 2023), Degree Show II, Palazzo Monti (Brescia, 2021); Extraordinario, Vulcano agenzia VEGA (Venezia, 2020); 103ma Collettiva Giovani Artisti, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Galleria Piazza San Marco (Venezia, 2020); Spin Off, Calle Lunga Santa Caterina (Venezia, 2019); Speculum mundi, Davide Gallo (Milano, 2018); Upon a Time, Galleria Eduardo Secci (Firenze, 2022); Fluuuuuido, Cassina Projects (Milano, 2022).

Alfredo Pirri was born in Cosenza, Italy, in 1957. He lives and works in Rome, is one of the best-known artists working there. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and graduated with a degree in Painting.

His work, between painting and sculpture, architecture and installation, gains international recognition in the mid-80s. Color, matter, volume and space are instrumental to his practice which finds, in the relationship with light, the origin of a research which continuously reinvents itself. The work of Alfredo Pirri harmonically confronts architecture and constantly tends to the creation of an archetypal place, a space for dwelling connected to a public function.

Alfredo Pirri has exhibited in several museums and biennials, in Italy and abroad, among which: Eduardo Secci Milan (2021); Castello Maniace, Siracusa (2021); MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (2017), Nomas Foundation (2016-2017), Museo Novecento, Florence (2015); London Design Festival (2015); National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome with the semi-permanent installation “Passi” (2012-2016); Palazzo Te, Mantova (2013) e Project Biennial D-0 ARK Underground Konjic, Bosnia Herzegovina (2013), where “Passi” is permanently exhibited; National Archaeological Museum Reggio Calabria (2011) with his permanent installation “Piazza”; Visual Arts Centre Pescheria, Pesaro (2007); Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Parigi (2006); Havana Biennial (2001); French Academy in Rome -Villa Medici (2000); MoMa PS1, New York (1999); Korrespondenzen, Walter Gropius Bau, Berlino (1992); Venice Biennial (1988).

His recent collaborations with architects Nicola di Battista (director of Domus) and Efisio Pitfalls (Studio PROAP, Lisbon) were exhibited in 2015 at the British School in Rome.

He has taught at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, at the Sapienza University in Rome, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo. He is currently teaching Painting at the Academy in Frosinone and Visual Arts Advisor at the American Academy in Rome.

In 2015 AMACI (Italian Association for Contemporary Art Museums) selected Alfredo Pirri as guiding artist for the eleventh contemporary art day.

Sebastiano Sofia was born in Verona in 1986. He lives and works between Verona and Milan, and after briefly attending a few courses at the Naba in Milan, he continues his journey as a self-taught artist. He uses painting, drawing and sculpture to develop his personal iconographic universe in which the human body, the animal world and the domain of things are in mutual dialogue, often organised around a narrative centre open to suggestions and interpretations. In her works, contamination and metamorphosis govern the relationship between figures and environments. Sofia explores the fusion between feminine and masculine, between human and animal, between the body as a place of control and the body as a space for the loss of rationality, using a language that reveals the most human and melancholic traits of absurdity and violence.

He has taken part in various artist residencies, including: Viafarini in residence (Milan) 2013, Bevilacqua la Masa (Venice) 2015, Maya Art Center (Sharjah UAE) 2018, Palmieri Collection in 2021 and De Iorio Collection in 2021/2022

Solo exhibitions include 2022 Marèa at Boccanera Gallery in Milan with a text by Alessandro Rabottini, 2019 Anemone at Palazzo Monti in Brescia with a text by Denis Isaia, 2018 Remember me curated by Laura Mezler at Maraya art Center in Sharjah (UAE), 2017 Natural Metamorphosis at Fatma Lootha Gallery in Dubai (UAE), 2016 Ariel at CarDrde in Bologna.

Kevin Francis Gray was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. He currently lives and works between London and Pietrasanta.

Kevin Francis Gray has generated bodies of work which address the complex relationship between abstraction and figuration. At the core of the artist’s practice is an interrogation of the intersection of traditional sculptural techniques and contemporary life. Rather than working towards ideals of beauty or memorial, Gray attends to the psychological effects, often relying on textural surfaces rather than facial or bodily expressions. Furthering Gray’s decade of working with marble, his new work pushes the possibilities of the artist’s sculptural practice into new territories of physical and psychological expression.

He received his BA from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin (1995) and the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and then went on to earn an MA in Fine Art from the Goldsmiths College in London. He works closely with the Giannoni marble studio in Pietrasanta, renowned for its use of sculpting techniques that date back to Canova and Michelangelo. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London, UK; Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art of the Val de-Marne, Paris, France; Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam; Palazzo Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy; Musee d’art Moderne, Saint-Etienne, France; ARTIUM, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; and Art Space, New York, USA.

Etsu Egami (1994, Tokyo, Japan), is a representative of the third generation of post-war Japanese contemporary artists, actively involved in Japan, China, United States, and Europe. She studied at The Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HFG) in Germany and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

She got The best artist prize in 2023, Forbes Asia 30 UNDER 30 in 2021, and now in New York dispatched as a talented artist by Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan Government. Etsu Egami currently lives and works between Tokyo and New York. Selected solo exhibitions include “Etsu Egami solo show”, Whitestone gallery Singapore (Singapore, 2023); “Etsu Egami: Obsession and Qusetion, New Horizons of Modern Painting”, Hiroshima Woodone Museum (Japan, 2022); “Rainbow”, Tang Contemporary Art, Seoul (Korea, 2022);  A2Z PARIS (Paris, 2022); “Etsu Egami: Rainbow”, Karuizawa New Museum(Japan, 2022); “Etsu Egami: In a Moment of Misunderstanding, All the Masks Fall”, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing (China, 2021); “RAINBOW- ETSU EGAMI”, Whitestone gallery Taipei, Taipei (China, 2021); “Face book- EGAMI ETSU”, Chambers Fine Art, New York (USA, 2021), etc

Francisco Domingos da Silva, known as Chico da Silva, was born in Alto Tejo, in the Brazilian state of Acre, the son of a Peruvian Indian and a woman from the state of Ceará. The year of his birth, based on research from different sources, is inconclusive, but it is estimated that the artist was born in 1910 (Fundação Bienal de São Paulo) or 1922 (Catalog of his first solo show in Fortaleza, 1961; Estrigas, 1988). Chico da Silva, from a very young age, traveled throughout the north and northeast of Brazil before settling in Fortaleza, Ceará.

In the early 1940s, he began drawing with charcoal and chalk on the walls of the cottages in Praia Formosa [Formosa Beach]. In 1943, Chico met the Swiss painter Jean-Pierre Chabloz (1910-1984), who introduced him to the local art circuit. In the same year, he participated in the collective exhibition Salão de Abril [April Saloon], followed by the 3rd Salão Cearense de Belas Artes, in 1944. Barboza Leite, referring to Chico’s early production in his book “Esquema da Pintura no Ceará [Painting Scheme in Ceará]”(1949), described it as follows “[…] the imprecise, nebulous forms, but dosed with a poetic intensity to the whole surface, of F. Silva’s paintings”.

In 1945, Chabloz exhibited paintings by Chico da Silva alongside Antonio Bandeira (1922-1967) and Inimá de Paula (1918-1999) at Galeria Askanasy in Rio de Janeiro. Over the next three years, the Swiss artist made occasional trips to Europe, returning to the continent permanently in 1948. Chabloz dedicated himself to promoting Chico’s work, staging his first solo show at the Galerie Pour L’Art, Lausanne, in 1952. In December of the same year, he published the article “Un Indien brésilien ré-invente la Peinture [A Brazilian Indian reinvents painting]” in the prestigious art magazine Cahiers D’Art, managed by Christian Zervos.

The departure of his friend and mentor had a great impact on Chico da Silva’s production, and during Chabloz’s stay in Europe, he held a small number of exhibitions in Brazil. Continuing his representation abroad, he participated in 1956 in the exhibition Arts primitifs et modernes brésiliens at the Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The beginning of the 1960s marked Chabloz’s return to Brazil for a short period – the Swiss returned to Europe in July 1960, where he stayed for two years – which facilitated Chico’s reintegration into the group of artists from Fortaleza.

On April 10th, 1961, Chico da Silva opened his first solo show in Brazil, which took place at the Sede dos Diários Associados, in Fortaleza, where he presented ten works. According to the text of the catalog presented by the then Governor Parsifal Barroso, his “mysterious stories of the jungles, where animals and accidents of nature interfere as if they were human creatures […] represent the best phase of the painter, especially for the coloring, imagination, and movement of the themes”.

In 1959, Chico da Silva was hired by UFC – The Federal University of Ceará to develop the activities of MAUC – Art Museum of the Federal University of Ceará. His participation at the University lasted until 1963, when he exhibited at Galeria Relevo, in Rio de Janeiro, through the intermediation of Jean Boghici (1928-2015). In the same year, he approached Henrique Bluhm, who began the process of commercializing his work. It was during this period that Chico da Silva established his image as the Mestre da Escola do Pirambu [Master of the Pirambu School], working closely with young artists interested in learning the craft of painting. In 1965, he participated in the exhibition 8 peintres naïfs brèsiliens at Galerie Jacques Massol in Paris.

In 1966, through the efforts of Clarival do Prado Valadares, owner of Galeria Goeldi, Chico was included in the delegation that represented Brazil at the 33rd Venice Biennale, where he received an Honorable Mention. In the exhibition catalog, his work is described based on a meticulous technique that “whether in detail or in color, brings together a sophistication of the physical and subjective medium of painting”. In a letter written to Haroldo Juaçaba, Clarival described the Venice experience as follows: “I fought hard for Chico. After seeing the four paintings (panels) exhibited, Jacques Lanaipre came to me secretly and asked me to show to five members of the jury the works by Chico that were not exhibited: exactly those twelve gouaches from the Art Museum of the Federal University of Ceará. It was a revelation. They said that if Brazil had made a room for the Indian, the result would be different”.

The late 1960s are marked by episodes in which different apprentices claimed authorship of his works, causing Chico da Silva’s mental and physical health to deteriorate. In 1972, he was included in the show Arte/Brasil/Hoje: 50 Anos Depois, at the Collectio Gallery, in São Paulo, followed by his participation in the 1st Latin American Biennial of São Paulo, at the Fundação Bienal, in 1978. In the last phase of his career, Chico continued to hold solo and group exhibitions in different Brazilian states, including Recife, Brasília, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1983, due to thrombosis, his health was completely debilitated. Chico da Silva died in Fortaleza in 1985. Since his death, he is considered a “primitivist genius” in Brazil, and his work fuses popular cosmologies from the north and northeast of the country. His concern with the exaltation of Brazilian fauna and flora is evident not only as a decorative element but as a formal expression of the organic subjectivity of the Amazon region and its complexities.