Francesco Lauretta's 'Grigio Contemporaneo' at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli, Milan

Francesco Lauretta, born in Ispica, Sicily in 1964 and turning 60 on January 14, 2024, presents his solo exhibition 'Grigio Contemporaneo' at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli in Milan. The show features 17 works all executed in 2023, including eight small canvases titled 'Noi, Cézanne' and one 'Noi, Picasso', alongside larger pieces depicting a Sicilian church square, a large crucifix, and bathers on a platform facing the Mediterranean. The exhibition's conceptual framework draws from Peter Sloterdijk's 2023 book 'Grigio. Il colore della contemporaneità', which positions gray as a symbol of meditative indifference and 'active mediocrity'. Lauretta also cites influences from Peter Weibel, Thomas Macho, Byung-Chul Han, Michel Pastoreau, and Peter Handke. Uniquely, the gallery provides visitors not with a critical text but with eleven short letters written by Lauretta to Paul Cézanne, inspired by Rilke's 1907 letters to his wife after seeing Cézanne's works at the Salon d'Automne. The gallery space has been repainted in Pantone Cool Gray 1 C. This is not Lauretta's first solo show in Milan but arrives at a significant personal milestone. Lauretta, who studied in Venice in the late 1980s, frequented Turin's art scene in the early 1990s, and now lives in Florence, also runs the informal 'Scuola di Santa Rosa' with Luigi Presicce. The exhibition highlights his shift from saturated colors to gray tones while maintaining his characteristic Sicilian identity.