LACUNA — Exhibition Design & Visual Identity for Sotto Sale Projects (2019)

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For LACUNA, the inaugural exhibition by Sotto Sale Projects, I developed both the spatial design of the gallery and the online/offline visual identity of the project. My intervention was guided by an interpretive reading of the exhibition’s conceptual premise and Sotto Sale’s manifesto; translating ideas of absence, layering, and perception into physical and digital form.

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The exhibition design was conceived as a material and atmospheric reflection of the term lacuna: a void, a pause, a luminous threshold between presence and disappearance. Drawing inspiration from Eugenio Montale’s Meriggiare pallido e assorto, I envisioned the “lacuna” as an ambiguous comfort zone — a blinding, yet soft and enveloping vacuum in which one floats between isolation and introspection.

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This conceptual foundation shaped the gallery’s display system. Layers of fabric defined the space, covering walls, creating plinths, and generating translucent planes that mediated the relationship between artworks and architecture. The fabric acted as a spatial synecdoche of the painter’s canvas, while the suspended hanging system — with paintings displayed on chains in front of layered backdrops — subverted the conventional hierarchy between wall and work, depth and surface.

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Each artist’s practice — from Yulia Iosilzon’s fluid dreamscapes to Matete Martini’s corporeal abstractions and Barbara Alegre’s tactile compositions — was reinterpreted within this layered environment, allowing light, material, and void to mediate new readings.

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In parallel, I developed the visual communication and digital identity of Sotto Sale Projects and the exhibition: a graphic language that mirrored the spatial strategy — subtle, textured, and rhythmic — bridging the physical and virtual dimensions of the project.

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Together, these elements composed a cohesive ecosystem that embodied Sotto Sale’s vision: “Transcending lines between the real and the virtual, and revealing the fragility of a society rooted in individualism.”

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Artists: Yulia Iosilzon, Matete Martini, Barbara Alegre
Curatorial Platform: Sotto Sale Projects
Design: Riccardo Rizzetto (Spatial + Visual Identity)

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