bn+BRINANOVARA's 'Antologia delle apparizioni' Blends Abstraction and Mannerism at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli

The Milanese artist duo bn+BRINANOVARA, composed of Giorgio Brina (born 1993) and Simone Novara (born 1994), are presenting their latest exhibition 'Antologia delle apparizioni' at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli in Milan. Active since 2017, the duo showcases a series of new large-format paintings that deconstruct and reinterpret Italian pictorial tradition through a highly calibrated abstraction. The exhibition's guiding concept is 'composition,' with the starting point being Pontormo's 1528 'Deposizione,' a masterpiece of Italian art history. From this painting, only limbs—hands and feet—survive in the duo's works, serving as anchor points amid an explosion of forms and colors. According to the critical text by Stefano Castelli, this embodies 'a contemporary idea of Mannerism understood as the coexistence of temporal planes and styles.' The installation eschews a predetermined path but features bold display solutions. The paintings combine layered color fields, pseudo-three-dimensional graphic elements, figuration, masking, and drawing, achieving an impeccable coherence. The formal complexity and balanced juxtaposition make precedents hard to find: a portion may suggest informal gesture, while a few centimeters away reveal biomorphic forms reminiscent of Yves Tanguy or spray can traces. The creative process is layered, conceptually akin to Willem de Kooning, resulting in an indistinguishable synthesis of two sensibilities.