ARTISTS
Sofia Degli Esposti
Tommaso Patacchini
TEXT BY
Sergia Avveduti
Luca Campestri
COLLABORATION
Ababo - Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna
ON OCCASION
Open Tour 2024
HIDE AND SEEK
20.06 - 13.07.2024
INTRODUCTION
PDF EXHIBITION
PREVIEW
CRITICAL TEXTS
APPOINTMENTS
INFO
Preview: Studio La Linea Verticale, as part of Open Tour 2024 and in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, presents the exhibition *Hide and Seek*, a two-person show featuring young artists Sofia Degli Esposti (Painting - Caccioni’s Chair) and Tommaso Patacchini (Sculpture - Rivalta’s Chair), accompanied by texts by Sergia Avveduti and Luca Campestri. Hide and Seek - (You won’t catch me around here) (1) Hide and Seek: the English name for the game we know as “nascondino.” The English expression goes further than ours: *Hide and Seek* encompasses two meaningful actions—hiding or being hidden, seeking or seeking oneself—where *seeker* can broadly signify a searcher: for truth, for adventure, for spiritual meaning… A space filled with hidden presences to be uncovered, the exhibition’s balance rests on the multidimensional play of hide and seek, oscillating between the paradoxical luminous shadows peeking from Sofia Degli Esposti’s canvases and the classic figures nestled and embedded in the molten plaster of Tommaso Patacchini’s sculptures. The challenge lies in discerning the profiles of unfamiliar beings within layers of gold leaf and daring to meet the gaze of sculpted blocks, listening to the artworks with an animistic resolve. *"Artworks speak like fairies in tales."* (3) With poetry and melody, sometimes rhyming, using metaphor but never directly, emphasizing the enigma they bear with grace. So, hide and seek, seek and hide, because the first rule of the game of Art boils down to these simple actions: search for what you do not know, make visible what is invisible, and hide what you already know. Cloak the revealed in mystery so that someone else may fail to recognize it and thus be compelled to seek it—seek to understand what eludes comprehension and question what you think you know. You’re right, Federico: Art is incomprehensible. Yet know this: it is precisely this incomprehensibility that makes it an inexhaustible source of wonder. As a matter of fact, *“it is not about understanding artworks but rather grasping their incomprehensible nature”* (3). --- **Event Details** **Title:** *Hide and Seek* **Artists:** Sofia Degli Esposti - Tommaso Patacchini **Texts by:** Sergia Avveduti - Luca Campestri **Opening:** June 20, 2024, 3:00–11:00 PM (Reception from 6:00–8:00 PM) **Exhibition Duration:** June 20–July 13, 2024 **Venue:** Studio La Linea Verticale, Via dell’Oro 4b, Bologna **Regular Hours:** Tues.–Sat. 3:30–7:00 PM --- **Opening Day:** Join us for the opening event on June 20, 2024, from 3:00 to 11:00 PM, with a reception in the gallery from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. Studio La Linea Verticale | Via dell’Oro 4b | Bologna [www.studiolalineaverticale.it](http://www.studiolalineaverticale.it) | info@studiolalineaverticale.it | +39 392 0829558 Facebook & Instagram: @studiolalineaverticale **Connect with Us:** Follow updates and previews on social media, and share your experience using the official hashtags: #studiolalineaverticale #hideandseek #opentour24
PRESS RELEASE
PREVIEW
SOFIA DEGLI ESPOSTI
By Luca Campestri
All my beliefs stagnate in doubt, which, grimy and weary, drags itself in shadow, a mirror of my unknowing and of this sense of abandonment. Sofia Degli Esposti’s work embodies a descriptive-contemplative investigation, reflecting a broader analytical approach to reality that manifests as a meditation on the medium itself. At the core of her research is gold leaf, employed as a metonym for light—a superficial impression of its diffusion. Through this painterly reinterpretation, the artist explores a kind of image memory, examining the dichotomy/identity relationship between an object and the shadow it casts. The exhibited works, part of the series *Breathing Light and Exhaling Oxygen* (2024), consist of shadows cast by meticulously constructed sets, crystallized on ceramic surfaces using gold leaf. The result is suspended images poised between abstraction and figuration, where the delicate textures of a tangible, everyday reality are rendered as photopictorial negatives. Her work thus becomes a point of convergence between the material and the ethereal, a surface for accumulation in an existence where spirituality and contemplation coalesce. Sofia Degli Esposti, Breathing Light and Exhaling Oxygen, 2024
TOMMASO PATACCHINI
By Sergia Avveduti
Tommaso Patacchini immerses us in an aesthetic experience, invoking the etymological meaning of the term *Aisthesis*, which suggests the idea of "immediately perceiving through the senses and experiencing wonder." This is precisely the sensation evoked by his works, constructed around visual references drawn from the iconography of art history. These references overlap and intertwine, narrating the gap between fragmented reality and the way it is reimagined and represented. The plaster sculptures are created using discarded, worn-out rubber molds sourced from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. The artist has reclaimed and repurposed them to devise a transformative process that draws on motifs from antiquity. Individual elements converge, suggesting the suspended image of an "arched skin," as seen in *Leviathan*, or appear inverted, as in the playful bas-relief titled *The Fool*. The work *The Wheel* always rests on one of its faces, in a way wearing them down, imparting a different inclination to the figure depending on which surface supports its weight. The piece engages with a complex temporality, one that encounters the past of its creation while radiating a mutable present—understood as the emotional and conceptual reverberation of its own being.
APPOINTMENTS
VERNISSAGE
Friday, February 2, 9-11 p.m.
Via dell'Oro 4B - Bologna
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