Vanni Cuoghi's Submarines and Flying Fish at Milan's Acquario Civico

Vanni Cuoghi (Genoa, 1966) presents sixteen recent or unpublished works at the Acquario Civico di Milano, opening September 3. The exhibition features eight bizarre paper cuttings in acrylic and ink on white paper, depicting large fish flying above mountain peaks like Mont Blanc, Dente del Gigante, and Grand Combin, framed in white boxes (62×43 cm). A series of small colorful canvases (40×60 cm) act as narrative boxes with compressed, surreal landscapes resembling miniature stages. One piece (70×95 cm) is painted on denim, referencing the 16th-century "tela di Genova" used by Teramo Piaggio for a Passion of Christ (circa 1538) now at the Museo Diocesano. Cuoghi's muse Erica appears in several works, sometimes pensive, sometimes divinized in a large monochrome acrylic. The artist insisted on exhibiting at the Acquario Civico despite pandemic delays, calling it "a fascinating place frequented by ordinary people and schoolchildren." A large diorama will invade the dark aquarium galleries, recreating Captain Nemo's study from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea at 1:1 scale, with painted furniture including a desk and armchair. An porthole opens directly onto one of the aquarium tanks. Cuoghi, trained in scenography, states: "Invention for me lies in staging, not pictorial representation. I like to recreate an ephemeral landscape that lasts the 'click' of a photographic shot and prolong with painting the memory of what was."