Alessandro Piangiamore
La polvere ci mostra che la luce esiste (When dust reveals the light)
21 March – 26 June 2026
Repetto Gallery, Lugano
La polvere ci mostra che la luce esiste (When dust reveals the light) is the first solo exhibition by Alessandro Piangiamore in Repetto Gallery's Lugano space.
The title draws inspiration from the chapter Dust in Suspension from French philosopher Georges Didi-Hubermann's book Accidental Knowledge, in which dust becomes a metaphor for what manifests itself only at the moment of passage, collision, or crossing. These reflections are expressed in the artist's work through visual representations which inhabits an imaginary world, suspended between the real and the ephemeral. In his research, Piangiamore engages in a continuous dialogue with natural elements, chosen for their sensory and perceptual qualities, such as earth, dust, light, air, colours, and smells. The exhibition further explores his poetics in an attempt to give form to that which lies on the border between the intangible and the concrete. Drawing on memory, personal experience, desire, the hues of the sky and the horizon line, the artist delves into the realm that inspires wonder in who can observe: the interplay of dust and light.
Dust, writes the philosopher, is something that «cannot be seen unless light moves through it», it is a fragile and unstable presence that makes the invisible visible, revealing for an instant the inner structure of space and resists the fixation of form. These thoughts resonate deeply with Piangiamore's practice, which lies precisely in that zone of indeterminacy where matter loses its consistency in order to become image. His works are the result of a precarious balance between what is destined to dissolve itself and what, silently, attempts to endure.
On display are videos, installations, sculptures and works on paper: multifaceted acts of manipulation and distortion; imprints; and attempts to capture and make eternal everything that, by its very nature, is destined to escape. This body of work spans the artist's entire professional career, as Italo Calvino notes in Collezione di sabbia (Collection of Sand): “Yet those who had the perseverance to continue this collection for years knew what they were doing, knew where they wanted to go: perhaps to distance themselves from the din of deforming and aggressive sensations, the confused wind of experience, and finally to possess the sandy substance of all things for themselves, to touch the siliceous structure of existence.”