Pier Paolo Calzolari's Hypnos at Galleria Franco Noero, Turin

Galleria Franco Noero in Turin presents Hypnos, a solo exhibition of Pier Paolo Calzolari (born 1943, Bologna) featuring recent works and pieces from the last few years, marking the artist's first show at the gallery's via Mottalciata space. The exhibition centers on matter as both protagonist and poetic vehicle, illuminated by the large skylight in the main room. Calzolari's practice uses materials like salt, lead, feathers, frost, and copper not as tools but as presences that evoke rather than describe, operating in a suspended space between reality and vision akin to the god Hypnos. He negates perspectival depth, presenting a horizontal and vertical visual field where pigments and objects coexist on the same plane, recalling archaic painting's sense of the sacred. Compositions avoid symmetry, relying on intuitive balance and harmonious asymmetry—for instance, a ball is never exactly centered on the canvas, and two shades of yellow pigment create tonal contrast. The installation itself follows this logic, with every detail positioned in a dynamic of suspension and vibration, making the space an extension of the works. The show includes transparent jugs faintly sketched in pencil on salt-covered canvas, with a burst of blue pigment placed slightly off-axis. The text is authored by Valeria Radkevych, an independent curator and researcher born in 1995 in Luhansk, Ukraine, with a master's degree from the University of Bologna and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.