We are please to announce Leonardo Meoni’s upcoming exhibition at the Stefano Bardini Museum in Florence, Gli altri colori purtroppo, sono tutti caduti (Unfortunately, all the other colors have fallen).
Curated by Sergio Risaliti and organized by Museo Novecento in collaboration with Amanita, the project features a selection of works specifically produced for the exhibition spaces of the Bardini Museum, in close dialogue with the collection of the Florentine antiquarian and connoisseur who founded the museum.

The exhibition will be opening on Monday, June 17 from 6 PM to 9 PM. We look forward to seeing you all there.

The title of the exhibition, translated in English as "Unfortunately, all the other colors have fallen," evokes the fresco painting technique. When frescoes are poorly preserved, portions of the paint might fall away, revealing the underlying preparatory drawings. For Meoni, the gaps and sinopias represent a reflection on the hidden, yet illuminating, additional space within the composition. The perception of light is strongly tied to Meoni's practice and his use of velvet, a material that absorbs light and makes the interpretation of the work ambiguous and ever-changing, dependent on the viewer's perspective. Excessive light and clarity reduce the cognitive abilities of the gaze and simultaneously dry up the spectrum of emotions, leading to a superficial reaction to the flat transparency of the signifier.

Thus, the intimate darkness of velvet implies not a negative but a positive connotation. The absence of light necessitates an effort to adapt the eye and focus on the essential elements of the work. By compelling the gaze to spend time on observation and contemplation, it becomes possible to fully grasp the essence of the work. The dark quality is linked to the artist's anti-pop impetus, which rejects an immediate reading and interpretation of the image, preferring to explore the intimate and hidden elements of representation.

Leonardo Meoni (b.1994, Florence) studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence and Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera and has participated in various collective exhibitions and projects, in Italy and internationally. Working with a strongly material approach, Leonardo Meoni’s works are rooted in a three-dimensional corporeality. In close contact with the precepts of pictorial art, time, representation and gestures, Meoni empathically blurs the boundaries between genres and artistic practices by existing in an intermediate space between painting, sculpture, and drawing, emphasizing in his work the contamination of practices and different concepts towards universal hybridization. Meoni’s works are the result of a performative gesture and are presented as monochromatic velvet canvases with an intimate cut, rich in shades that give organicity to the composition. In a material game of action and subtraction, a temporality marked by the artist’s movement is added to the three dimensional aspect of his works. The velvet, by absorbing the light, returns an ambiguous image, like a primordial photograph in which the control of the glare is subject to the surrounding elements and not to the precision of the medium, creating a figure that opposes easy visibility.

Leonardo Meoni’s upcoming institutional show will take place at the Sandra & Giancarlo Bonollo Foundation in Thiene (VI) curated by Marta Papini. Leonardo lives and works in Prato, Italy.