We are delighted to present Valentina Pini’s second solo exhibition in our gallery. The Zurich-based artist from Ticino gained significant attention in 2025 with two major projects. Her video work, Arco Voltaico, created for the ArteSOAZZA exhibition, was subsequently shown and awarded at the City of Zurich Art Grants at the Helmhaus. The video captures the annual maintenance of the Misox hydroelectric power plant headquarters deep within the mountains above Soazza, fascinating viewers with its rhythmic precision and visual clarity. In her solo exhibition Calibrando l’occhio at the Museo Vincenzo Vela in Ligornetto, Ticino, Pini focused on video, sculpture, and photography to unfold her formal vocabulary, leading the audience into a fantastical, alchemical visual cosmos. Calibrating the eye, engaging with the unexpected and the uncanny, hinting at the new and capturing it visually—these elements define Pini’s artistic practice.
Although Pini moves virtuousically across various media, sculpture remains her primary medium, which she studied at the Royal College of Art in London. Her video works and photography complement her sculptural pieces, casting them in a different light. On one hand, Pini’s art is inspired by alchemy, exploring materials, substances, their potential transformations, and the underlying laws of physics. On the other hand, her practice and use of materials are consistently enriched with narrative elements.
In the gallery exhibition Décorps, Pini focuses again on sculpture, photography, and relief. The title defines the semantic field of the show: the coined word "Décorps" refers both to décor (ornamentation, set dressing) and corps (the body). Pini occupies the first room of the exhibition with a series of metal works with resin cast inside titled Autour du cou à la hauteur des yeux (Around the neck at eye level). By hanging the sculptures at an exaggerated shoulder height and employing strict axial symmetry, Pini references jewellery and costume elements: collars and necklaces. These are adornments – perhaps accolades – for the absent figures who might wear them. The formal vocabulary draws from Art Nouveau and early 20th-century glass art. The translucent colours of the objects, which hang at a distance from the wall, lend them a floating lightness. Their placement creates the illusion of bodies; in Pini’s work, the absent body is always implied and part of the thought process.
This becomes particularly visible in the sculpture Amplification in the second room. A person is indicated solely by two fringed epaulettes attached to two symmetrically arranged rails. Fringed epaulettes typically elevate a male figure into a specific social position; for women, these shoulder pieces are primarily used as striking fashion accessories. This work is a reference to Pini’s exhibition at the Museo Vincenzo Vela, where she engaged with a major work by Vela: an imposing equestrian statue of Charles II, Duke of Brunswick, using it as a starting point to reflect on symbolism, mutability, masculinity and materiality.
To the left of Amplification hang three photographs depicting details of plaster sculptures from the Museo Vincenzo Vela. In this photographic series, Displaced Fractures, Pini directs her attention toward the fine, often overlooked details of the plaster figures. While this group of works refers explicitly to Vela’s sculptures, closer inspection reveals foreign bodies – hooks, nails, or wire structures. These are not merely functional elements, but silent witnesses to materiality, vulnerability, and construction. On one hand, they make the manual process of sculpting visible; on the other, they become symbols of physical frailty and psychological dislocation. Pini thus references a tradition in modern sculpture that understands the body not as a whole, but as a fragmented and reconstructed entity. Simultaneously, these works reverse the logic of Pini’s installations: they capture the representation of a body rather than creating a physical body in space, rendering the fragmentation and decorative aspects of the body both more mystical and more visible.
Two series of reliefs, a practice the artist has developed over years, complete the exhibition. The large-scale works are dedicated to the vegetation in the garden of the Museo Vincenzo Vela. These reliefs include motifs from the surroundings without reproducing them naturalistically, combining them with objects from the artist’s archive. Pini creates complex compositions and expands on her own mythology—returning to objects such as grapefruit pieces, lemons, or dragons while adding new narratives to her vocabulary. Through the mixture of found objects and artist-created ingredients, the audience is left uncertain about the origin, meaning, and purpose of the elements, invited instead to interpret what they see.
Following the first series, the second group of reliefs, At the Tip of the Tieback, continues the dialogue with nature while heightening the theatrical aspect of the exhibition. This series was created in early 2026 during Pini’s residency at the Bogliasco Center in Liguria. While Pini again uses vegetation from the immediate surroundings – in this case, the gardens of the Bogliasco Center – she enriches these compositions with new narrative fragments: small figurines and curtain tassels. A significant novelty here is the inclusion of the frame as an integral part of the works. As a result, the reliefs transform into independent stage elements that scenographically complete the bodies implied in the space.
Despite its conceptual depth, the body of work in Décorps is not without humour. Viewers are constantly challenged to guess what they are seeing and which illusion they are falling for. Valentina Pini thus acts as a puppeteer, staging symbolic bodies in space and playing with their fragile yet imposing nature to create what is perhaps a theatrical experience.
The exhibition is on view until 2 May 2026.