The Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo Foundation for Contemporary Art in Thiene, in the province of Vicenza, Italy, presents two new exhibition projects that confirm the institution’s commitment to showcasing international talent and building a cultural landmark with global reach. From Nov. 22, 2025 to Jan. 31, 2026, visitors will be able to confront the solo exhibition of American painter Anna Glantz, titled Everything is getting grayer, more golden and chilly / It’s getting grayer and gold and chilly, curated by Elisa Carollo, and that of South African photographer Pieter Hugo, Affinities / Affinities, curated by Federica Angelucci. Both exhibitions occupy the spaces of theformer Chiesa delle Dimesse complex at 1 Via dell’Eva in Thiene.
Anna Glantz’s works, created specifically for the spaces of the Foundation, offer an in-depth overview of her most recent research. The artist focuses on the genesis of form, that is, the elements that precede the actual representation. Glantz’s painting practice develops around matter, color and form, with the aim of crystallizing the tension between the inner and outer worlds, between figuration and abstraction. His painting distances itself from the models of traditional figuration to construct an alternative pictorial logic, in which forms emerge through chromatic vibrations and modulations of tone rather than through conventional lines or geometry. In the artist’s canvases, space and time take on a sensitive and perceptible quality through material and color. Each work becomes a slow and reflective process of reconnecting with the essence of things and their original image. The works as a whole highlight a dialectic among the pictorial elements: brushstrokes, tones and recurring motifs combine to generate meanings that would not emerge if observed in isolation. The exhibition experience offers a revelation of sorts: for Glantz, painting is no longer a means of mere representation, but a tool through which to interrogate how we perceive and inhabit the world with our senses and minds. His canvases rematerialize perceptions, memories and sensations, translating intimate and subjective experience into visible forms.
“The painting placed on the altar,” explains Elisa Carollo, curator of the exhibition, “while formally recalling sacred icons, no longer needs to depict divinity: the painting itself becomes a vehicle of manifestation that, through the material and the process of creation it embodies, reveals the deepest mystery of creation, the genesis of all things that emerge from chaos and emptiness to become form.”
In parallel, the Foundation is hosting Affinity, a solo exhibition by Pieter Hugo, a South African photographer. The exhibition brings together portraits of people encountered by the artist over the years from different geographical and social backgrounds. Hugo’s focus is on the subjects’ intimacy and visual connection with the viewer. The portraits, full-length or half-length, often depict nude subjects looking directly at the viewer, creating a suspended scene that is detached from the before and after. The faces and bodies photographed are presented outside of stereotypes and categorizations, delineating a complex and unsimplified map of contemporary humanity, where each individual maintains his or her own irreducible singularity.
“A lot of my work fits into the post-documentary tradition, and is aimed at investigating the veracity and possibilities of the photographic medium,” the artist explains. “However, I cycle back to what has always attracted me to photography: curiosity, being present in the world, transience, and photography’s clear connection to death. Exploring how an image can be ”enough,“ without needing to be anything more than a record of time, of someone having observed, taken a stand, or felt an impulse strong enough to want to make one. ”If normality is symmetrical, I am attracted to the asymmetrical. The rigidity of a normal gait must be suffocating. Society wants to exert control, through a binary state in which everything is balance and resolution."
Hugo draws on different visual languages, from forensic dermatological photography to art history, incorporating these references into his shots. The series There’ s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends, which also includes a self-portrait, draws inspiration from medical photography: skin marks and pigmentations become informational elements. The images, digitally manipulated and reduced to black and white, enhance imperfections and contradictions related to aesthetic perception and the canons of beauty imposed by popular culture. Among the works on display, the series Solus Vol. I collects portraits made by street-casting, inviting models to present themselves unfiltered against a neutral background, and offering an analysis of the aesthetic values that characterize the contemporary fashion industry. Some portraits clearly refer back to art history; Gabrielle and One of Her Sisters minimizes surrounding details to let two naked bodies occupy the entire visual space, generating an atmosphere suspended between eroticism and tenderness. Last Days of Breastfeeding, on the other hand, shows a mother with her baby, the only example in the exhibition of a domestic interior, evoking reminiscences of Renaissance Madonnas without re-proposing their iconographic form, but maintaining their quality of intimacy.
Hugo also explores themes of age and gender: three color portraits highlight youth and masculinity. In Truck Driver, exuberance and an open gaze delineate a direct relationship with the world; in Shaun Oliver, middle age is depicted with irony and a defiant attitude; Jakob, the artist’s teenage son, shows the audience physical and psychological vulnerability, transforming fragility into expressive strength. The exhibition closes with Crow’s Feet, Cape Town (2018), a detail of the eye extracted from the series What the Light Falls On, made over the past 23 years, where the relationship between photographer and subject, observer and observed, is focused on, embodying the essence of Affinity.
With these two exhibitions, the Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo Foundation consolidates its position as a center of reference for international contemporary art, confirming its vocation to serve as a cultural crossroads and to foster the circulation of works and artists from the most diverse international contexts.
Anna Glantz (Concord, 1989) lives and works in Los Angeles. Her painting moves between figuration and abstraction, exploring the psychology of image, perception and the relationship between vision, time and the production of meaning. A graduate in Art and Linguistics from UCLA, she received an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2014. She has exhibited in galleries such as The Approach (London), Chris Sharp Gallery (Los Angeles), Foxy Production and PAGE (New York), and participated in international fairs such as Independent New York. He has taken part in group shows at Marian Goodman Gallery (Los Angeles), Tanya Leighton (Berlin), Zabludowicz Collection (London), Standard (Oslo), Petzel Gallery and James Cohan Gallery (New York). Awards include the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant (2016), the Andrew Fisher Fellowship (2013), the Dong Kingman Fellowship (2012) and the UCLA Regents Scholarship (2007). Her works can be found in private and institutional collections, including the Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Erling Kagge Collection, and Museum Voorlinden. In 2025 the Bonollo Foundation dedicated its first institutional solo exhibition to her in Italy.
Pieter Hugo (Johannesburg, 1976) lives and works near Cape Town. He works between studio portraiture, documentary photography and staged compositions, investigating how history, context and time imprint themselves on people, places and visual cultures. Through portraiture she explores subcultures, marginal identities, conflict, self-representation and family dynamics, creating a space between appearance and shared humanity, between aesthetics and responsibility of the gaze. His best-known series include Kin (South Africa), The Hyena Men (Nigeria), Nollywood (Nigerian film industry) and La Cucaracha (Mexico). Hugo’s works are in such collections as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). He received the First Prize at the PDN Photo Annual Award (2015), the Discovery Award at the Festival Rencontres d’Arles (2008), the KLM Paul Huf Award (2008), and the First Prize Portraits section of World Press Photo (2016). Recent solo exhibitions include Foam (Amsterdam), Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte (Dortmund) and MAXXI (Rome).
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| Contemporary art in Thiene: Anna Glantz and Pieter Hugo in two solo shows |
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