LOOM Gallery Moves to Former Christian Stein Space, Opens with Jonathan Monk Show

LOOM Gallery, founded in 2015 by Luca Maffei and Nicola Mafessoni, has relocated to a historic space at via Lazzaretto 15 in Milan's Porta Venezia district, formerly occupied by the Christian Stein gallery. The new venue features parquet flooring, white walls, and white columns rising to skylights that flood the room with natural light. The gallery inaugurates with a solo exhibition by British artist Jonathan Monk (b. 1969, Leicester, UK) titled F. I. N. G. E. R. S., running until October 30, 2020. The show responds to Maurizio Cattelan's L.O.V.E. sculpture (an 11-meter middle finger in Carrara marble installed in Piazza della Borsa since 2010) by imagining the remaining fingers attached to the hand, resulting in a fascist salute that interacts with the neoclassical fascist-era facade of Milan's stock exchange. Monk recreates the missing fingers and presents them in the gallery, inviting viewers to reconstruct the context and reflect on the role of statues in an era of iconoclasm, referencing the Black Lives Matter movement. The gallerists cited the need for more space to elevate their artist roster and the lockdown pause as an opportunity to rethink exhibition scale.