The Studio G7 Gallery in Bologna kicks off its new exhibition season with *The Perception of an Object Costs Exactly as Much as Its Loss*, Gregorio Botta ’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition, open to the public from September 22 to December 22, 2026, will open on Saturday, September 19, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and features a selection of works created by the artist over the past two years, following his recent institutional exhibitions at the MAN in 2025 and the Rothko Museum in 2026.
The project continues a line of research Botta has been developing for over thirty years, focused on the relationship between matter, light, and perception. The surfaces of the works are created by layering rice paper, tissue paper, wax, and pigment. These are not painted surfaces, but elements that acquire thickness and a sort of skin—defined by the artist as “solid glazes”—capable of retaining and reflecting light and altering the perception of the work depending on the viewer’s perspective. Water, glass, wax, smoke, paper, and natural elements constitute the vocabulary through which Botta explores the temporal dimension of matter. Glass spheres filled with water, wax forms, and shelves introduce three-dimensional elements that extend the work into space, transforming emptiness into a material component.
The exhibition is part of a body of work that moves in the opposite direction from the demand for immediate and easily readable images. The works grapple with the tension between the desire for totality and the awareness of the impermanence and fragmentary nature of experience.
“Ultimately, all my work is based on questioning, on perception, and on the impossibility of a complete vision,” says the artist.
The exhibition’s title is taken from a line by Emily Dickinson and evokes the relationship between perception and loss: what appears continues, at the very moment it is perceived, to slip away. On the occasion of the exhibition, Botta’s first artist’s book will also be presented, accompanied by a text by Lorenzo Respi. The project includes texts by Ilaria Bonacossa, Alberto Salvadori, and Lorenzo Respi.
Born in Naples in 1953, Gregorio Botta lives and works in Rome. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome under Toti Scialoja, he made his debut in 1991 at the Galleria Segno. He has participated, among others, in “Transparencies of Italian Art on the Silk Road” in Beijing in 1993, the 12th Rome Quadriennale in 1996, and the Parks Biennial at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome in 1998. His works, created using wax, glass, iron, and natural elements such as water, fire, and air, are included in public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, MAXXI, MACRO, MART, the Madre Museum, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, FRAC Alsace, and the European Central Bank.
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| Gregorio Botta pushes perception to the limits of visibility: the new exhibition in Bologna |
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