On May 21 at 6 p.m., Boccanera Gallery will open Sebastiano Sofia ’s solo exhibition entitled Scordare il volo (Forgetting to Fly) at its Milan headquarters. The project brings together a series of small paintings, drawings and sculptures, born from a pictorial gesture and a personal action of the artist, which build a visual narrative suspended between poetry and restlessness. At the center of the exhibition is the depiction of birds that are not flying, but falling. The birds staged by Sofia are not trapped in gravity, but in thought.
Flight, an instinctive act par excellence, appears in these works interrupted and vulnerable. The fall is read as a moment of new awareness. Through this image, the artist raises a perturbing question: what would happen if birds suddenly forgot how to fly? The artist’s proposed reflection extends beyond the animal world to question the human condition. Indeed, Sofia invites the viewer to consider the implications of the loss of spontaneity in everyday, vital gestures. Breathing, walking, loving, living: acts that one normally performs without thinking about them could, in this perspective, become conscious, intentional and continuously reasoned actions.
“To get to know Sebastiano Sofia,” says PierPaolo Pancotto, “it is enough to look at his works, a faithful mirror-almost indiscreet, so truthful- of his person. In them, in fact, his past and present experience, his character, his sensitivity are reflected, and the medium he adopts to relate to the world around him is fully clarified: the dream [...] a fluid painting, sometimes impalpable but capable of suddenly veering to flat and bright color backgrounds, strongly expressive that alternates between figuration and non-figuration, letting transpire the attitude of its author to explicate, through his creative gesture, an inner dimension.”
“The goal of the exhibition project is not only aesthetic, but deeply experiential,” Sofia says. “Forget the Flight is not just an exhibition, but an invitation to a deeper reflection about the role of consciousness in our ability to live in balance with ourselves and the world, to look at life with new eyes and to rediscover the mystery hidden in the simplest gestures.”
Within the exhibition, the artist explores the sense of alienation that would result from having to think about every gesture, depriving it of its naturalness. The works in the exhibition are presented as fragments of this narrative. Small-format paintings and drawings on panel are arranged along a perimeter exhibition route that invites intimate and collected enjoyment. The visitor is called to get closer to observe the details of the works, as if to spy the moment when instinct gives way to reflection. A further level of the exhibition is developed on the second floor balcony. Here, Sofia offers a sculptural action that takes up and amplifies the theme of the loss of instinct. Small birds molded in still raw clay were placed so that they collided against the gallery’s large windows in their futile search for an escape route to the outside world. The collisions left impressions on the glass and changed the shape of the birds themselves before they fell to the ground. These clay fragments, dried naturally, will later be fired, turning into permanent sculptures. In this way, the works will retain the trace of the original act, preserving in their material the memory of the clash between impulse and reality. The primary gesture, spontaneous and instinctive, is documented and fixed in lasting form, while the process of transformation again recalls the tension between naturalness and awareness that runs through the entire project.
During the May 21 opening, Sebastiano Sofia will also give space for a personal action. The intervention, conceived as an integral part of the exhibition, is intended to further emphasize the transition between instinctive gesture and loss of spontaneity. The exhibition will be on view in Boccanera Gallery’s Milan spaces starting May 21, with free admission, and will remain open throughout the spring season.
Born in Verona in 1986, Sebastiano Sofia lives and works between Verona and Milan. In 2023 he participated in the residency program organized by Secci Gallery in Florence. The previous year, in 2022, Boccanera Gallery Milan hosted his solo exhibition Marea, created in dialogue with Alessandro Rabottini and born from the residency experience at the De Iorio Collection in Verona between 2021 and 2022. In 2021 he took part in the residency promoted by the Palmieri Collection in Celle Ligure, Savona, while in 2017 he was selected for the Dolomiti Contemporanee residency project in Pieve di Cadore, Belluno.
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| In Milan, Sebastiano Sofia's exhibition "Forgetting the Flight" explores the loss of the |
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