CHRISTOPHE LAUDAMIEL
A Complete Portrait by Christopher DiCas
CONNEXXION 2025
Free within, Free without
THE 2025 ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE
Between Climate, Intelligence, and Co-Creation
Ca’ Tron Palace, Venice
SHIRIN NESHAT Body of evidence
ROBERTA REDAELLI’S SS25 COLLECTION
Weaves Fashion, Art, and AI into a New Vision of Humanity
IN A TIME DEFINED BY MOVEMENT AND TRANSITION OF PEOPLE, IDEAS, MATERIALS, AND MEANINGS—THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN DISCIPLINES FEEL MORE PERMEABLE THAN EVER. THIS ISSUE OF ARCHLOVE EMBRACES THAT LIMINAL SPACE, INVITING READERS TO EXPLORE HOW ARCHITECTURE, ART, AND OLFACTORY DESIGN BECOME TOOLS TO BOTH REFLECT AND REIMAGINE THE WORLD WE INHABIT.
From Venice, we dive into the 2025 Architecture Biennale, where this year’s themes challenge conventional notions of permanence and provoke urgent questions about planetary responsibility, cultural legacy, and the social contract of design. Meanwhile, at PAC in Milan, Shirin Neshat’s solo exhibition offers a striking counterpoint: a poetic, visual choreography of exile, femininity, and resistance revealing how space is not only built but also felt, remembered, and politicized.
We travel further south to Villa Igiea in Palermo, where the hyperreal sculptures of Bertozzi & Casoni disrupt historical grandeur with the audacity of contemporary decay and absurdity. In this issue, we also speak with Christophe Laudamiel, master perfumer and scent provocateur, who invites us to consider the architecture of air itself. His vision expands the way we experience spaces introducing scent not as a final touch but as a structural element in the emotional, sensory and cultural mapping of place.
Each contribution in this edition reflects a commitment to cross-pollination to looking beyond categories and toward connections. Whether through urban design, ephemeral installations, performative gestures or invisible molecules, the question persists: how do we build meaning today?
More than a theme, inhabiting tensions is a lens through which we observe how the instability of our time becomes fertile ground for experimentation, beauty, and, perhaps, a new ethics of making.
We invite you to enter these spaces, hold the contradictions, and explore what emerges when architecture loves the world in all its fragility.
Raffaele Quattrone
Editor-in-Chief
NESTLED BETWEEN MONTE PELLEGRINO AND THE GULF OF PALERMO, VILLA IGIEA IS MORE THAN A HOTEL: IT IS A PORTAL INTO HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE EVER-SHIFTING LANDSCAPE OF MEDITERRANEAN CULTURE.
Originally envisioned as a sanatorium by the illustrious Florio family and later transformed into a grand hotel, Villa Igiea has been lovingly restored by Rocco Forte Hotels, blending Belle Époque grandeur with refined contemporary elegance
Its sweeping views over the sea, lush terraced gardens, and frescoed interiors offer not only a luxurious retreat, but also a space deeply attuned to the rhythms of art and nature.
It is within this setting suspended between past and present that Bertozzi & Casoni unveil their latest sculptural exhibition: What We See Is Not What It Is But What We Are.
Conceived in celebration of World Contemporary Art Day and in homage to Sicilian ceramic tradition, the exhibition transforms the hotel into a temporary theater of metamorphosis. Through their hyperrealistic sculptures, the artist duo invites us to reflect on the transience of time, the persistence of beauty, and the invisible threads connecting objects, history, and imagination. Walking through the salons and gardens of Villa Igiea, the works appear as apparitions too real to be illusion, too poetic to be mere replicas of the real. Bertozzi & Casoni’s ceramic compositions are not simple homages, but complex meditations on art history, temporality, and meaning.
A series of three vases, delicately placed on a console table, echoes the silent compositions of Giorgio Morandi. The stillness is almost tactile: porcelain flowers caught in an eternal moment of suspension, echoing Morandi’s metaphysical silence.In the adjoining room, a luminous tribute to Vincent van Gogh takes form through a vibrant bouquet of sunflowers. Here, the iconic subject is translated into ceramic with uncanny realism, yet reinterpreted with bold, sculptural weight. It is a Van Gogh that has stepped out of the frame, challenging the limits of material and time. Nearby, violins cases cradling slashed canvases pay tribute to Lucio Fontana.
These works are not literal reconstructions, but ceramic reliquaries of a radical gesture the artist’s cut which opened painting to space, void, and spiritual depth. At the heart of the exhibition is a central paradox: the use of fragile, earthly ceramic to speak of transcendence, memory, and decay. Bertozzi & Casoni do not merely imitate reality; they elevate the everyday into emblem and metaphor. A wilted flower, a broken object, or a suitcase left ajar becomes an allegory of time’s passing, of the beauty that lingers even in ruin, and of the stories we project onto the things we leave behind.
But why Villa Igiea? Why Palermo?
Because Villa Igiea is not just a place it is a story. Its walls have witnessed travelers, poets, artists, and aristocrats. Its gardens have collected secrets whispered in the wind. Its architecture, both majestic and intimate, seems to bend time The exhibition finds in this place a natural counterpart. Just as the sculptures speak of transformation, nostalgia, and suspended moments, Villa Igiea mirrors these themes in its very stones. And Palermo a city of contrasts and stratifications is the perfect backdrop for this dialogue. A city where decay and splendor coexist, where the baroque meets the brutal, where sea winds carry myths and memories, Palermo resonates with the dualities embodied in Bertozzi & Casoni’s practice. Their works are grounded in craftsmanship, yet open to conceptual inquiry. They celebrate local tradition (ceramics, Sicilian culture) while engaging in global conversations about art, temporality, and perception.
During the vernissage, a performance by musicians from Teatro Massimo Palermo’s iconic opera house further deepened the experiential dimension of the exhibition. The music, composed and performed sitespecifically, echoed through the frescoed halls and down into the gardens, creating a sensorial dialogue between sculpture and sound, presence and absence. The performance followed the cycles of life, echoing the exhibition’s central question: What remains of a sound once heard? What remains of an image when we close our eyes?As curator, I wanted this exhibition to pose questions, not offer conclusions. What we see is never just what is there. It is also shaped by our memories, our wounds, our dreams. Reality, as philosopher MerleauPonty reminds us, is not a fixed image, but a lived experience always mediated by perception. What We See Is Not What It Is But What We Are explores this space in-between: the fertile tension between reality and imagination, object and symbol, eye and soul.
In that sense, each sculpture by Bertozzi & Casoni becomes a threshold. It invites us to cross into another layer of meaning, to engage in slow looking, and to suspend our judgments. A burnt book, a crumpled flower, or a cracked surface these are not simply “things,” but triggers. They awaken a recognition in us, a feeling of déjà vu, or perhaps the hint of something lost but not forgotten.
The exhibition is more than a collection of artworks it is a meditation on the visible and the invisible. It invites the viewer to question their relationship with reality and to understand that every image contains a shadow, and every object a memory. As the title suggests, what we see is always filtered through what we are. This interplay between sculpture and site transforms Villa Igiea into an open, living gallery. The exhibition dissolves the boundary between the art space and the lived space,
between contemplation and hospitality. Visitors are not just observers but participants in a multi-sensory, immersive experience one that lingers long after the visit ends. Ultimately, What We See Is Not What It Is But What We Are is an invitation to observe more attentively, to remember more deeply, and to feel more fully. And perhaps that is the quiet revolution that art can still offer us: a new way of seeing the world, and ourselves within it
So why should we visit this exhibition?
Because it is a reminder. That even in a flower made of ceramic, we can find life, fragility, and wonder. Because sometimes, in the most unexpected places a sculpted object, a forgotten hotel garden, a slashed canvas we rediscover the preciousness of being present.
The 2025 Architecture Biennale marks a turning point of historic significance. Curated by Carlo Ratti architect, engineer, and professor at MIT in Boston this edition of the International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is titled “Intelligens Natural Artificial Collective.” The neologism emphasizes the urgent need to draw not only from technological tools, but also from a diffuse and intergenerational intelligence to respond to the greatest challenge of our time: adapting to a world altered by climate change.
Unlike previous editions, which focused on sustainability and mitigating environmental impact, the 2025 Biennale takes a conceptual leap forward: it is no longer just about reducing harm, but about radically rethinking how we design the spaces in which we live Architecture is presented as a resilient and optimistic act not merely a barrier against a hostile environment, but an opportunity to mend the bond between the built space, human desires, and rapidly changing climate conditions.
This Biennale opens with a stark and dramatic confrontation: rising global temperatures, declining populations, increasingly frequent fires and floods “ a fierce and unprecedented assault by the natural elements” that demands a paradigm shift. Architecture, Ratti asserts, must respond by returning to its roots: designing not just to survive, but to live better.
“Intelligens,” the exhibition’s title, plays on a dual meaning On the one hand, it evokes the many forms of intelligence natural, artificial, collective; on the other, with the Latin suffix “-gens” (“people”), it suggests a communal, inclusive, and cross-disciplinary vision of design. The result is an exhibition that goes beyond display, becoming a truly transdisciplinary laboratory.
For the first time, the Biennale brings together over 750 participants and 300 projects, involving not only architects and urbanists, but also climatologists, artists, mathematicians, chefs, philosophers, farmers, and computer scientists. This chorus of voices is at the heart of Ratti’s curatorial approach: a radical opening of the curatorial process, initiated through Space for Ideas a global call that generated a participatory infrastructure, an “ open forum” where ideas were selected, iterated, and reshaped in a collaborative and horizontal process.
By moving beyond the figure of the architect as demiurge, the 2025 Biennale also redefines the very concept of authorship: no longer a solitary gesture, but a distributed intelligence taking form through the contributions of many. The model is that of academic research or open-source software, where every meaningful voice is acknowledged. This is a deeply political gesture, challenging traditional hierarchies and valuing collective intelligence as a design resource The exhibition layout reflects this inclusive philosophy.
The Show is divided into four sections:
1.Natural Intelligence: explores how to learn and design from natural ecosystems.
2.Artificial Intelligence: examines computational intelligence not only as a tool, but as a creative partner.
3.Collective Intelligence: presents projects born from collaboration between communities, networks, and disciplines
Out: a conceptual leap into space, not as escape from the planet but as a reflection on its care.
Each section is conceived as a modular, fractal organism, with projects intersecting in a network of dialogues, allowing visitors to chart their own paths. Installations are designed to be dismantled and reused, following the principles of the Circular Economy Manifesto promoted with Arup and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. With the Central Pavilion under renovation, Venice itself becomes the protagonist and a living laboratory A symbolic and powerful choice: as one of the cities most threatened by climate change, Venice hosts distributed installations that integrate with the urban fabric, transforming the Exhibition into a dynamic network of site-specific interventions.
Through its Special Projects, architects, companies, and researchers address local and global issues, turning the Biennale into a testing ground for real, scalable, and sustainable solutions. Furthermore, the One Place, One Solution program invites each National Pavilion to propose strategies born from their local context but applicable on a global scale. At the heart of the Biennale’s Public Programme, GENS is a schedule of conferences, debates, and workshops running throughout the Exhibition. From the Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian to the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, and the Speakers’ Corner at the Corderie, GENS fosters dialogue among scientists, activists, students, politicians, and artists in a process aiming to make the Biennale not just a showcase, but a catalyst of collective awareness.
Connections with COP30, the Baukultur Alliance, C40, and the Soft Power Club amplify the project’s international impact and suggest a new vision for the role of cultural institutions: not self-referential centers, but platforms for transformative action.
The 2025 Architecture Biennale is not merely an exhibition: it is a radical cultural proposal that redefines the role of architecture in contemporary times. No longer an object, but a process. No longer a solitary act, but shared intelligence. In times of climate crisis, Ratti and his team remind us that adaptation is not resignation, but the possibility of regeneration. Venice, fragile and precious, becomes the symbol of this ethos: a city that resists not by hardening its forms, but by opening itself to change. And so does architecture at last intelligens.
CA’ TRON PALACE, VENICE
MAY 10 - NOVEMBER 23, 2025
On May 10, the exhibition Rome Is a Comet opened at Ca’ Tron a symbolic venue for the Iuav University of Venice as an official Collateral Event of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Carlo Ratti under the theme “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.”
Conceived by Umberto Vattani, with Cristiana Collu, Giuseppe D’Acunto, Giampaolo Nuvolati, and María Margarita Segarra Lagunes, Rome Is a Comet proposes an alternative map of the Italian capital one that doesn’t begin at the Colosseum or Saint Peter’s, but rather at the Palazzo della Farnesina.
THIS IMPOSING RATIONALIST BUILDING, ORIGINALLY PLANNED IN THE 1930S FOR SPORTS AND REASSIGNED IN 1960 TO THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, BECOMES HERE A LENS THROUGH WHICH TO READ A DIFFERENT, UNEXPECTED ROME.
It was within this very building that, twenty-eight years ago, the Farnesina Collection was born, initiated by Vattani himself, then Secretary General of the Ministry. Comprising over 250 works of contemporary Italian art all selected and installed without public funding the collection transformed a government headquarters into a cultural landmark, well before the arrival of MAXXI or the Auditorium
The exhibition starts with a powerful premise: if art can transform architecture, can it also reshape the urban fabric?
From that question emerged the vision of the District of Contemporary, a constellation of landmark sites from the Foro Italico to the Farnesina, the Palazzetto dello Sport to the Flaminio Stadium, the Olympic Village to MAXXI, from Renzo Piano’s Auditorium to the Mosque, and the future Museum of Science aligned along a trajectory like a comet cutting through the dense historical layers of Rome and redefining its present identity The Palazzo della Farnesina stands as a temporal threshold between two defining eras: the monumental rationalism of the Fascist period and the optimism of postwar reconstruction. This architectural and symbolic transition becomes key to reading a Rome suspended between memory and imagination, between stratification and reinvention.
The Venice installation rendered this vision palpable. A nighttime aerial photograph of Rome, suspended like a reversed sky beneath Ca’ Tron’s vaulted ceiling, created a disorienting yet poetic atmosphere. Below, a handdrawn map by Laura Canali traced the “comet’s” path. Six wall-mounted screens displayed images and bilingual audio narrations, while a large projector looped a glowing satellite flow of the contemporary city Visitors were invited to take away a printed Forma Urbis a foldable map designed to be held, marked, and remembered suggesting a tactile, emotional approach to today’s Rome.
Rome Is a Comet is more than an exhibition: it’s a cultural device, an invitation to rewrite the city from a new point of view one that cuts across architecture, urbanism, art, and geopolitics. It is also a call for design responsibility: to stop seeing Rome as a static museum and start conceiving it as a living metropolis, one capable of embracing the challenges of sustainability, coexistence, and spatial innovation
As Vattani writes in the catalog (distributed free at the opening): “This project opens up a new gaze on Rome. Rome Is a Comet flips the usual perspective on the city. It doesn’t start from ancient ruins, but from a vibrant, layered, lived-in Rome. From a district the District of Contemporary where the Tiber runs through a beating urban park. And where a forgotten truth resurfaces: Rome was born on the river And thanks to the river, it has always been also a city of the sea ”
“FLOWERS.
Fragile yet powerful, timeless yet contemporary, flowers have always whispered the secrets of civilizations. With the exhibition “Flowers. Art from the Renaissance to Artificial Intelligence,” the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome offers an exceptional ode to this universal symbol, tracing a luminous arc through five centuries of creativity, innovation, and cultural imagination. Running from February 14 to September 14, 2025, the exhibition is curated by Franziska Stöhr and Roger Diederen, in collaboration with Suzanne Landau.
Set in the evocative spaces of a 16th-century cloister, the show brings together over 90 artworks paintings, manuscripts, tapestries, sculptures, photographs, installations, and immersive technologies revealing how flowers have flourished across epochs, both as artistic subject and symbolic force.
The curatorial vision is clear: flowers are not ornaments; they are storytellers, protest banners, spiritual messengers, and ecological witnesses.
“They epitomize every aspect of life: from resilience to spirituality, from love to conflict, from science to ecology,” explains Natalia de Marco, Artistic Director of the Chiostro del Bramante.
In this curated garden of meaning, the past and the present intertwine. Renaissance painters such as Jan Brueghel the Elder and Girolamo Pini showcase the flower’s sacred and profane roles, with obsessive botanical detail and layered allegory. Edward BurneJones and William Morris, leading voices of the PreRaphaelite movement, evoke floral beauty as a vision of purity and dreamlike grace
Beside them, contemporary voices resonate with equal intensity. Ai Weiwei and Kapwani Kiwanga use the floral motif as a political tool a metaphor for fragility under pressure, and a silent emblem of resistance. Studio Drift merges robotics and poetry, offering kinetic installations that mimic the organic intelligence of petals and stems. Kehinde Wiley infuses boldness and color into his floral portraiture, reclaiming the aesthetic of power and identity. Meanwhile, Rebecca Louise Law constructs a fragrant corridor of real flowers an immersive, ephemeral architecture that the viewer walks through and breathes in.
One of the most captivating installations comes from Miguel Chevalier, who challenges our perception of the natural and the artificial through digital ecosystems that bloom and wither in real time. And the exterior of the Chiostro itself becomes a living sculpture: artist Austin Young (of Fallen Fruit) transforms the building’s façade into a floral utopia, bringing the exhibition outside the gallery walls and into the Roman cityscape
More than a visual experience, the exhibition dares to tackle deeper questions. A dedicated section explores the role of flowers in science and politics from the botany of the Enlightenment to bees as ecological artists, from symbolic bouquets in civil rights protests to genetically engineered flora. Here, petals become platforms for activism, and nature a network of meanings, coded with beauty and warning alike
The exhibition draws on loans from ten countries, including prestigious institutions such as the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Petit Palais, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Galleria Borghese, and The Israel Museum. This is not just a celebration of floral art it is a global cartography of bloom, demonstrating how cultures have cultivated, interpreted, and politicized flowers across time and space.
Produced in collaboration with the Kunsthalle München, the exhibition underscores the enduring relevance of floral imagery in contemporary discourse. As Natalia de Marco notes: “The beauty of flowers is universal, but their interpretation changes over time and space. This exhibition invites us to rediscover the evocative power of these extraordinary gifts of nature.”
At a time when ecological consciousness and technological innovation are reshaping the art world, “Flowers. Art from the Renaissance to Artificial Intelligence” reminds us that beauty is never just beauty it is a lens, a language, and a line of resistance. This is more than an exhibition; it is a sensorial choreography, where sight, scent, and symbolism converge. A place where art and science, the intimate and the planetary, the ancient and the post-human coexist blooming in the eternal springtime of thought.
From March 28 to June 8, 2025, the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea (PAC) in Milan hosted Body of Evidence, the most extensive retrospective ever dedicated in Italy to Iranian artist Shirin Neshat. Her poetic vision delves into the duality of oppression and selfdetermination, memory and oblivion, silence and protest.
The biggest mistake one can make when visiting a Neshat exhibition is to assume that the artist speaks only about herself as a woman, an Iranian, a self-exiled American artist. The true power of her work lies in its ability to resonate universally, transcending cultural backgrounds and touching on deep, shared aspects of human experience. Neshat’s art is built upon a refined balance of contrasts, which become both the visual and conceptual language through which she explores existential tensions The black-and-white aesthetic that defines much of her photography and video art is not merely a stylistic choice but a metaphor for the polarities that shape the world: light and shadow, presence and absence, past and present.
Martinez (2019), from Land of Dreams series, Digital c-print with ink and acrylic paint, 182,9 x 121,9 cm
BODY OF EVIDENCE, installation view Courtesy PAC
Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea - Milano, Photo credit Nico Covre
One of the most recurring themes in her work is the dialogue between East and West an ongoing exchange that never resolves into a simple opposition. These contrasts do not function as binaries but rather as a means to create images that provoke questions rather than provide answers. There is never a definitive right or wrong side; everything remains suspended in a state of continuous tension, much like life itself Rather than constructing rigid dichotomies, Neshat portrays the inner conflict of those caught between cultures, torn between the desire to belong and the distance of exile. This tension is evident in Soliloquy (1999), one of her most evocative works, where the solitary figure of the artist moves between two architectures one Western, one Islamic without ever finding a true place of belonging.
The video unfolds as an internal dialogue between two spaces: West and East, modernity and tradition, belonging and displacement. The window from which the artist gazes is not just a vantage point but a threshold an invisible barrier between familiarity and distance. Another central duality in Neshat’s work is the relationship between men and women, which takes shape in Women of Allah (1993-1997) through the symbolic use of veils, weapons, and calligraphy on the skin Here, the female body becomes a battleground where script, arms, and intense gazes intertwine. The woman is both victim and rebel; her body symbolizes both oppression and defiance. Yet, these images do not simply reflect the condition of women in the Islamic world they are also an ode to resistance and courage that resonates across all societies.
The theme of life and death is also pivotal, as seen in Passage (2001), where a funeral procession in the desert transforms into a sacred dance. Accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack by Philip Glass, the film presents a group of men digging a grave with their hands, while a lone woman dressed in black observes in silence. The dust, the ritual movement, and the solemn atmosphere turn mourning into a visual and almost sacred act Passage was Neshat’s first color video, following the black-and-white trilogy of Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999), and Fervor (2000) works that, though not included in this exhibition, remain highly representative of her artistic language. In Turbulent (1998), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, a male singer performs a traditional Persian song before an audience, while a woman, standing alone and turned away from the spectators, responds with an experimental, wordless melody. The video highlights the censorship of female voices in Iran and, more broadly, the conflict between power and rebellion, silence and expression. Rapture (1999) presents two separate groups: men in black confined within a fortress and women in white traversing the open desert.
While the men remain trapped, some of the women set sail into the unknown. In Fervor (2000), a fleeting glance exchanged between a man and a woman during a religious gathering underscores themes of desire and repression in a society shaped by strict moral codes.
In The Book of Kings (2012), Neshat revisits Iran’s past to reflect on contemporary struggles for freedom worldwide Inspired by Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the epic Persian poem of the 10th century, she creates a series of portraits of Iranian men and women divided into three symbolic categories: the martyrs, the revolutionaries, and the tyrants. Their faces, inscribed with Persian calligraphy, echo the aesthetics of Women of Allah but with a broader focus moving beyond Iran to address universal cycles of power, resistance, and oppression. With Land of Dreams (2019-2021), Neshat takes a bold step forward, intertwining photography and film to explore the power of dreams as a mirror of social tensions. Filmed in the southwestern United States, the work follows Simin, an Iranian photographer collecting the dreams of Americans for a mysterious government agency.
This ironic reversal of perspective in which an Iranian studies Americans, rather than the other way around offers a haunting portrait of contemporary society. The accompanying photographic series, featuring intense portraits of dreamers, amplifies the sense of vulnerability and shared humanity.
Tracing Neshat’s trajectory from Women of Allah (1993-1997) to Land of Dreams (2019-2021), we observe a significant evolution in her poetics While her early works focused specifically on Iranian identity, later projects expand into universal themes of exile, memory, and resistance. Over time, her visual language has shifted: from stark dualisms to more fluid narratives, from individual portraits to collective storytelling, from localized cultural discourse to a broader reflection on human vulnerability in an unstable world.
Neshat’s art began as an exploration of Iranian women’s identities and evolved into a meditation on the complexities of human identity as a whole. Her work no longer merely juxtaposes East and West, freedom and oppression; instead, it dissolves these binaries, revealing the porous, ever-shifting nature of cultural boundaries. Through her lens, exile is no longer just a geographical condition it is a universal state of being In an era where globalization, migration, and political upheaval have redefined notions of belonging, her work serves as both a reflection and a warning, reminding us that the search for home, identity, and self-determination is a journey shared by all.
Giorgio de Chirico (Greece, 1888-Italy, 1978) Interno metafisico con fabbrica, 1958-59 oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
Private collection © Giorgio De Chirico, by SIAE 2025
Photo credit: Nuova Arte
FROM THE HISTORICAL AVANT-GARDE TO MASKED ARTISTS, THE ART OF FREE THINKING
CURATED BY CESARE BIASINI SELVAGGI
21GALLERY, PADUA
APRIL 17 - AUGUST 30, 2025
In the heart of Padua, a city long steeped in intellectual dissent and visionary art, a new chapter in Italy’s contemporary cultural landscape has begun. The opening of 21Gallery Padova an ambitious extension of the Treviso-born gallery initiated by Davide Vanin with the support of Alessandro Benetton marks more than just a geographic expansion. It’s a conceptual one. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, AUDACI Dalle avanguardie storiche agli artisti mascherati, l’arte del libero pensiero (Audacious: From Historical AvantGardes to Masked Artists, the Art of Free Thought), curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, is a manifesto as much as it is a show. Situated in Palazzo Colonne, a 19th-century building resting beside the legendary tomb of Antenor, the mythical founder of Padua, the new 21Gallery space was redesigned by Fosbury Architecture, curators of the Italian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale.
Their sensitive approach to adaptive reuse and curatorial staging aligns seamlessly with the exhibition’s central theme: resistance through imagination, rebellion as architecture, and the mask as both protection and provocation. There is a certain historical inevitability in launching such a show in Padua. The city was once the academic refuge of Galileo Galilei, who conducted his most daring experiments in the same atmosphere of inquisitive freedom that led Giotto to revolutionize medieval painting with a newfound emotional immediacy. Elena Comin, 21Gallery’s director and herself a collector-turned-manager, underlines this connection with a question that haunts the exhibition: Are we still capable of being audacious?
This isn't a rhetorical flourish. In a moment when the art world increasingly performs conformity under the guise of radicality where the language of subversion is often emptied of its stakes AUDACI attempts to restore the term to its full meaning.
With over thirty works spanning a century of artistic production, the exhibition traces the trajectory of “free thought” in art not through movements or schools, but through acts of rupture each piece a refusal to comply with dominant ideologies, aesthetic or political.
We begin with Giacomo Balla’s 1918 Forze di paesaggio + polvere, a Futurist piece that paradoxically marks both the optimism and the aggressions of modernism. From here, the exhibition spirals outward across decades and continents. Yayoi Kusama’s hallucinatory dots speak to compulsive introspection; Carla Accardi’s Orli neri channels abstract resistance from a woman in a male-dominated post-war Italy. Alex Katz, with his 1971 Turban, offers flat portraiture imbued with cool detachment, resisting the emotional excesses of his time.
But it is in the latter sections of the exhibition those dedicated to artists like Cindy Sherman, Jan Vercruysse, Catherine Opie, and the anonymous provocateurs of street and masked art where the show becomes sharply current. Figures like Laika, Manu Invisible, and Andrea Villa (themselves pseudonyms) echo a phenomenon that transcends aesthetic form: art as social armor. These artists wear literal or metaphorical masks to preserve their anonymity not out of cowardice, but as a strategic response to an environment increasingly hostile to dissent. The mask, in AUDACI, operates in multiple registers: as a performance device, a shield, a refusal of the marketable self. Laika’s Self Portrait Against War (2024) is emblematic raw, urgent, and visibly engaged in protest. These are not decorative gestures but works born from precarious positioning, a kind of artivism (as Selvaggi calls it) that situates the artist at the intersection of creativity and political risk. This is perhaps the most potent thread of the exhibition: its ability to question the complacency of contemporary art institutions. While much of the mainstream art world has metabolized protest into spectacle, AUDACI reorients attention toward the quiet, marginalized, and often censored gestures that constitute true resistance.
In his curatorial statement, Selvaggi insists that “art, by nature, is political, as it is a relational space.” This idea courses through the exhibition like a subterranean current.
From Marina Abramovic’s corporeal challenges to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s social mirrors, the show proposes that the most compelling art does not merely represent reality it repositions us within it. It agitates, intervenes, and ultimately, survives outside institutional consensus It’s telling that many of the featured artists both historic and emerging have faced exclusion, censorship, or outright hostility. Yet they persist, shaping what Selvaggi calls “another possible way of being in the world.” In this, AUDACI is less a retrospective and more a rehearsal for the future. That such a message is staged within Palazzo Colonne, reimagined by Fosbury Architecture, is no accident. The building itself participates in the exhibition’s ethos.
With its Roman-era columns and 19th-century bones, its new configuration is not overwrought with futurist interventions. Instead, it acts as a careful frame, allowing the works and their ideological charges to reverberate. Fosbury’s design, shaped by a commitment to sustainability and social engagement, echoes the artists’ own inquiries: How can space support dissensus? How does architecture care for radical thought? The expansion of 21Gallery, with backing from Banca Ifis and led by a director outside traditional curatorial circuits, signals a move toward a different kind of cultural institution. One that values risk. One that doesn’t merely speak to art’s marketability but returns to its civic function. If AUDACI is any indication of the gallery’s curatorial intent, Padua has gained not just another exhibition space, but a new organ in the city’s long body of dissent. In an age of calculated neutrality, 21Gallery is choosing vulnerability. And that, perhaps, is the most audacious act of all.
Irene Pittatore, Monumenta Italia / Cantiere Savona, Special Project CONNEXXION 2025, Monumento ai Caduti, Savona 6 June 2025 Ph Michele Alberto Sereni
Supported by the Municipality of Savona, the Agostino De Mari Foundation, and the Industrial Union of the Province of Savona, the 2025 edition of CONNEXXION, titled “Free Within, Free Without”, reaffirms its participatory and relational mission, aiming to engage the widest possible audience. Continuing the thematic thread of the previous edition –“…to be free. Between identity and memory” – curator Livia Savorelli deepens her exploration of the concept of monumentality, a research path initiated with the festival’s first edition in 2022. Once again, the core theme of CONNEXXION is freedom.
The participating artists for CONNEXXION 2025 are: Gino D’Ugo, Federica Mariani, mCLp studio and Daniele Nitti Sotres, Angelo Demitri Morandini, Matteo Musetti, Isabella and Tiziana Pers, Irene Pittatore, Mona Lisa Tina, Silvia Vendramel, Narda Zapata, and Maya Zignone.
“In a moment of profound global crisis – where the logic of domination suffocates any breath of humanity and freedom – and in the midst of individual disorientation, with rising violence stemming from anger, frustration, and a prevailing lack of values, asking ourselves what it truly means to be free is a vital and urgent question,” explains Livia Savorelli. “Contemporary art can help us focus on such questions, opening the door to reflections that may germinate new visions Drawing inspiration from Ivan Petruzzi’s illuminating book Free Within. Free Without. The Concept of Freedom in Times of Crisis, this edition of CONNEXXION invites us to reflect on a new conception of freedom – not as a 'temporary permission' but as an existential attitude. Are we truly capable of exercising our right to freedom and living it fully in our everyday lives? Or are we only able to dream of it as an abstract concept, one we are unable to realize in the real world?”
The 2025 edition of CONNEXXION unfolded on the ground floor of the former prison in Piazza Monticello, featuring site-specific installations, performances, and talks. In this space – once a symbol of restricted freedom – art breathed the soul of the place and the stories held within its walls, becoming an agent of regeneration that moved from the individual to the collective. Each artist had been invited by curator Livia Savorelli to select one of the prison cells or communal areas to develop a personal narrative on the theme of freedom. These interventions raised questions that offered new interpretative keys and critical reflections for visitors, transforming the space into a living dialogue between memory, imagination, and liberation.
One of the most powerful and emotionally resonant experiences of CONNEXXION 2025 was Monnalisa Tina’s Io non ho vergogna. Itinerante, a participatory and relational performance curated by Livia Savorelli. This marked the first official stage of a long-term project conceived by the artist and art therapist, first explored in embryonic form in 2014 in Genoa during the Teoremi Festival. After her evocative performance Tra Te e me in the chapel of the former San Paolo Hospital during CONNEXXION 2022, Tina returned to Savona with a new action rooted in vulnerability, empathy, and the human need for connection. The performance unfolded across various locations in the city beginning at the Mercato Civico where the artist engaged in silent, intimate exchanges with strangers: a mutual, unforced confession of shame or taboo, shared through physical contact of the hands and the meeting of eyes. These deeply personal moments gave rise to authentic emotional dialogues, transcending societal structures and cultural constraints. Prior to the festival, local associations were invited to anonymously collect vocal testimonies via WhatsApp, adding to the constellation of “shames” exchanged during the live encounters. These collected voices were later woven into a powerful audio composition, amplified and symbolically “released” within the former Sant’Agostino prison a collective ritual of liberation that embodied the festival’s core theme: Free Within, Free Without
As part of CONNEXXION 2025, Monumenta Italia / Cantiere Savona by Irene Pittatore offered a powerful reflection on public monuments as living symbols of memory, identity, and social consciousness. A photographer and performer with a long-standing interest in the intersection of gender, memory, and public space, Pittatore continued her critical exploration of Italy’s monumental heritage through this new site-specific chapter of her ongoing public art project In Savona, the artist activated an open photographic workshop around three emblematic city monuments: the Monumento ai Caduti by Luigi Venzano, the Monumento a Garibaldi by Leonardo Bistolfi, and the Monumento al Marinaio by Renata Cuneo.
On June 6 and 7, in collaboration with students from the CeDanSa dance school, she invited the public to engage in collective reflection on the visible and invisible meanings embodied in these statues. Through subtle choreographies and photographic portraits staged in public space, the project created moments of encounter and dialogue revealing both the celebrated narratives and the silenced histories inscribed in Savona’s urban landscape. Following the performative and video-based work produced during the Turin chapter in 2024, Cantiere Savona repositioned the monument not as a static relic of the past but as a dynamic platform for rethinking dominant identities and amplifying marginalized voices.
With Liminal, Italian artist Filippo Berta made his longawaited solo debut in China at Wu Space Contemporary Art in Shenyang, offering a powerful and unsettling reflection on the notion of boundaries personal, social, political, and existential. Curated by Lu Zhao and Angel Moya Garcia, the exhibition marked a significant moment for Wu Space, known since its founding in 2018 for presenting complex and multifaceted explorations of contemporary art Berta’s practice is built around tension between the individual and the collective, the intimate and the public, the spoken and the unspoken. Over the past fifteen years, he has developed a body of work that rejects comfortable narratives in favor of raw, performative acts that expose fragility, conflict, and the limits of human interaction. In Liminal, the artist brings this research into sharp focus through a circular exhibition structure, composed of four interrelated “acts,” each probing a different kind of boundary.
Rather than relying on a singular medium, Berta navigates freely between video, performance, installation, and photography. For him, these are not ends in themselves but vehicles through which deeper questions are posed questions that touch on belonging, identity, and the invisible forces shaping our lives. In one moment, we are witness to small, repetitive gestures charged with emotional intensity; in the next, we are confronted with the silence of absence or the echo of voices that speak for a broader, shared vulnerability.
One of the most compelling aspects of the show is its insistence on participation not always direct, but always felt. Berta’s works pull the viewer into a space of responsibility. You are not simply observing a scene unfold; you are implicated in it. The artist’s interest in collective processes and social choreography turns each piece into a fragment of a wider ritual, where bodies, gestures, and gazes coalesce into temporary communities.
At the core of Liminal lies a deep concern with the human condition in flux. The exhibition does not offer answers or comfort. Instead, it invites us into a space of discomfort a threshold where meaning is suspended, where identity is questioned, and where the rules are rewritten. In a time when global societies face increasing polarization and fragmentation, Berta’s work asks what it means to be part of something larger, and what is required to truly see and be seen by others
With Liminal, Wu Space once again affirms its role as a platform for dialogue and experimentation, opening a space in China for one of Italy’s most thought-provoking artists. The exhibition is not just a retrospective but a living, breathing encounter one that echoes long after the viewer has left the room.
Guadagnucci G , Germination, ph Enrico Amici
By placing in conversation two internationally renowned sculptors Gigi Guadagnucci and Gio’ Pomodoro this exhibition offers a compelling reflection on the deep resonance between material, landscape, and imagination. Both artists, though distinct in their formal approaches, found common ground in the Apuan territory, drawing from the region’s historic relationship with marble and bronze to sculpt their respective poetics of form and light Their shared affinity with nature, and in particular with the elemental force of the sun, offers a fertile cultural lens through which to revisit a pivotal moment in the evolution of Italian contemporary art a moment defined by what Bruto Pomodoro calls “the tradition of the new.”
Curated by Mirco Taddeucci, with critical texts by art historian Paolo Bolpagni and in collaboration with Bruto Pomodoro, son of the artist and vice president of the Gio’ Pomodoro Archive, the exhibition Gigi Guadagnucci | Gio’ Pomodoro: A Conversation on Nature unfolds across the evocative spaces of Villa Rinchiostra, home to the Museo Guadagnucci.
The show features 18 works, including 13 sculptures drawn from both the museum’s permanent collection and important public and private loans as well as five drawings by Gio’ Pomodoro, one of which has never before been exhibited. The exhibition is structured to highlight the aesthetic and conceptual convergences between the two artists. While Guadagnucci, a native of Massa who developed much of his career in Paris, sought rhythm and abstraction through the sensual study of vegetal forms, Pomodoro a sculptor emblematic of the Italian 20th century and deeply rooted in both Orciano di Pesaro and Milan translated the physical phenomena of nature into sculptural systems of expansion and tension. As curator Mirco Taddeucci notes, “Guadagnucci’s florid, sensual forms reach beyond mere representation to explore the articulation of natural forms in space. His marbles delicately laminar, full of light and rhythm aspire to defy gravity, especially in works such as the ‘meteoric passages,’ which reach a nearly immaterial lightness.”
Pomodoro-G -Folla-1962-B N
In contrast, “Pomodoro’s early organic-vegetal forms gave way to ‘surfaces in tension,’ where the physical flow of nature is captured in a dynamic vocabulary of rotation and torsion. During his time in Versilia, stone became the medium through which tension transformed into twist the Sun serving as the guiding regulator of form.”
The selected works such as Liana, Rondine, and Etoile by Guadagnucci, and Folla, Sole Caduto per Galileo Galilei, and Tracce by Pomodoro are placed in thoughtful spatial relationships throughout the villa.
While Pomodoro’s pieces occupy the upper floor in dialogue with three major works by Guadagnucci, the ground floor houses a rich selection from the permanent collection, highlighting the progression of Guadagnucci’s luminous and almost ethereal sculptural language. The museum’s historical garden, with its restored eighteenthcentury geometry, serves not only as a setting but also as an interlocutor, hosting one of Pomodoro’s sculptures in direct engagement with the natural environment.
Gigi Guadagnucci’s search for a paradoxical lightness in marble achieved through his deep technical mastery is characterized by a rare ability to make stone appear translucent, almost immaterial. His sculptures, often suspended between figuration, stylization, and abstraction, evoke an emotional resonance through their delicate layering and subtle modulation of surface.
Gio’ Pomodoro, meanwhile, never mimics nature; instead, he interrogates its inner laws, translating the mechanics of organic life into sculptural archetypes. His signature “torsions” emerge from cylindrical drums and dynamic tensions, structuring space through spirals and radiating rhythms. As Rossella Farinotti observes, “The dialogue between Guadagnucci and Pomodoro was historically and formally inevitable The urgency to relate these two virtuosos of marble artists of different generations but shared geographies and affinities has long been tangible.”
Paolo Bolpagni frames the exhibition as a true “conversation,” not only between two bodies of work, but between two ways of thinking sculpture’s relationship with nature. “Their reflections on the Sun central to both practices resonate profoundly in a century when sculpture had to rethink itself. Guadagnucci and Pomodoro offered different, but comparable, responses united by certain essential concerns.”
A bronze sculpture by Gio’ Pomodoro, Sole Deposto, placed in Massa’s Piazza Aranci, acts as an open-air extension of the exhibition. Situated near the historic obelisk which also functions as a sundial, the work reconnects the museum to the larger urban and cosmic rhythms bridging art, city, and sky in a final gesture of luminous dialogue
On July 3, 2025, the Sala dei Cannoni of Rocca Paolina in Perugia will open its doors to a singular vision: Prima che faccia buio (Before Darkness Falls), a posthumous exhibition of the enigmatic Italian painter Domenico Ventura. Far from a conventional retrospective, the show stages a deep encounter with the emotional contradictions, silent rituals, and poetic grotesques that have long defined Ventura’s oeuvre a painter both elusive and uncompromising in his pursuit of a visual language that resists comfort. The exhibition brings together over thirty works, all rendered in the same format, forming a rhythmic sequence of images that invites the visitor into a surreal, immersive environment. Ventura’s paintings do not depict scenes in the traditional sense; they construct atmospheres. His figures are stretched, distorted, symbolic not for effect, but to evoke the dissonance of modern existence. Each canvas becomes a frame in an unmade film, a tableau from a dream just slipping out of reach.
Born in Altamura in 1942 and trained in part in Umbria, Ventura remained on the margins of the Italian art world not out of exclusion, but choice. His work speaks from that edge: between irony and reverence, seduction and critique, clarity and enigma. In the Sala dei Cannoni an austere, historical space heavy with ecclesiastical and political resonance Ventura’s vision finds a potent counterpoint. The dialogue between his phantasmagoric imagery and the fortress-like setting is electric It heightens the tension that runs through his relationship with institutional power, particularly the Church, which he both invokes and subverts with almost ritualistic precision.
There’s something undeniably cinematic in the exhibition's pacing not simply in the format of the paintings, but in the way they function as fragments of an overarching psychological narrative. If there is a plot, it is the story of humanity viewed through a funhouse mirror: twisted, exaggerated, but never less than sincere. Ventura’s grotesque is not nihilistic. It is compassionate in its distortion, revealing the inner chaos of fragile identities in a fragmented world
The title Before Darkness Falls is more than a poetic metaphor. It captures the threshold moment the artist continually explored: that sliver of time where light dims and perception falters, where the familiar mutates into the uncanny. Ventura painted from within this liminal zone, refusing the certainties of daylight and embracing the ambiguity of dusk both literal and existential.
Critics and viewers may hear echoes in his work: the surreal dread of David Lynch, the lyrical unease of Pasolini, the elegiac tones of Lucio Dalla. But Ventura doesn’t imitate; he absorbs and transfigures. His influences are metabolized into a visual language entirely his own saturated with silence, mystery, and a kind of dark radiance. In the subterranean depths of Rocca Paolina, a fortress that once symbolized papal authority and now houses echoes of another kind, Ventura’s paintings emerge as ghostly presences. They do not explain themselves.
Instead, they wait like dreams half-remembered, like shadows before nightfall. For those willing to listen with their eyes, Prima che faccia buio offers more than an exhibition. It offers an encounter intimate, disorienting, and unforgettable.
WEAVES FASHION, ART, AND AI INTO A NEW VISION OF HUMANITY
In her Spring-Summer 2025 collection, Italian designer Roberta Redaelli elevates the synergy between fashion and contemporary art into a poetic, philosophical dialogue. At the heart of this season’s creative journey lies “Mesh Room”, a visionary art project by Italian photographer Demesis Tescaro, in which photography meets artificial intelligence to reimagine the human form through a surreal and anthropological lens The result is a fashion collection that is more than an ensemble of garments it’s an immersive exploration of identity, evolution, and the intangible dimensions of being.
Tescaro’s work, which began with a series called Bodies, now transcends skin and flesh to unveil a multidimensional human an entity shaped by memory, experience, and technology. “Mesh Room” abandons conventional perspectives in favor of a layered reality, where body, mind, and imagination coexist in fluid harmony. Through AI-enhanced visual experimentation, the project delves into the metamorphic essence of existence, tracing a poetic arc between ancient myth and futuristic inquiry.
This layered vision flows directly into Redaelli’s designs. The prints and textiles are a sensory symphony of spirals and volutes graphic motifs extracted from Tescaro’s AIaugmented artworks. Each pattern evokes a dreamlike portal, inviting the viewer into a world where nature and the digital intermingle, creating a liminal space between dream and reality.
The color palette amplifies this tension between ethereality and depth Shades like Drop, Nectar, Honey, Bitter, Anise, and Mead recall the mythical Ambrosia the nectar of the gods suggesting garments imbued with a sacred, transformative power. These hues whisper rather than shout, yet they possess a bold, unmistakable presence.
Stylistically, the collection is a triumph of contrasts: luxurious jacquards dance alongside airy ruffles and volants in stretch silk, while structured silhouettes are softened by fluid lines and tactile details. The brand’s iconic knitwear fabric, DINAMI-TECS, returns in a fresh series of tailored jackets, marrying cutting-edge textile innovation with timeless elegance. As always, Redaelli’s mastery lies in her ability to balance conceptual ambition with wearability While the collection echoes the metaphysical and the abstract, it remains rooted in a confident, contemporary femininity.
Each piece is designed not just to be worn, but to be experienced an invitation to inhabit a dream where art, science, and soul converge. SS25 by Roberta Redaelli is not just a collection it’s a statement of being, a wearable reflection on our shifting identities in a world where the boundaries between reality and simulation grow increasingly porous. It is an ode to the human spirit, captured in soft textiles and bold visions, and destined to leave a mark not only on the skin, but in the imagination.
In the world of fragrance, few names resonate with the authority and artistry of Christophe Laudamiel. Not merely a perfumer, but a visionary a true alchemist of scent who fuses the precision of chemistry with the boundless imagination of art. Born in France, Christophe’s journey from prodigious student to olfactory innovator reads like a symphony composed in molecules and memory Graduating as valedictorian with a Master’s degree in Chemistry from Strasbourg, Christophe’s mastery of science laid the foundation. Yet it was his flair for the intangible the emotional that catapulted him beyond the laboratory. At MIT and Harvard, he taught chemistry, merging intellect and creativity with an already deep-rooted passion for education. Then came Procter & Gamble, where the humble fabric softener was transformed into an evocative narrative Lenor Cherry Blossom was no mere scent; it was an experience. Cherry blossom petals kissed by saffron, grapefruit, and cardamom, underscored by the groundbreaking use of Helvetolide®, revealed his uncanny ability to elevate commercial perfumery into an art form.
His fingerprints mark some of the industry’s most iconic fragrances. Abercrombie & Fitch’s Fierce captures youthful energy with vibrant cucumber and sage, enriched by woody and molecular accords. Estée Lauder’s Youth-Dew Amber Nude seduces with a complex dance of cinnamon, ginger, amber, and vetiver. And Tom Ford’s Amber Absolute stands as a testament to luxe minimalism draped in amber and molecular sandalwood a bold partnership of house and artist, chemistry and elegance With Strangelove NYC, he pushes boundaries further, crafting scents that live and breathe olfactory creatures requiring care and passion. From the dark allure of Dead of Night to the sensuous embrace of Melt My Heart and the exotic whisper of Silence the Sea, these perfumes invite an experience as much as admiration. We are impatient to discover his new creations at Generation by Osmo the art he is now crafting in thisinnovative space. Christophe Laudamiel is more than a creator he is a crusader. Advocating fiercely for perfumers’ rights, championing transparency, and demanding honesty about natural ingredients, he fights against an industry often shrouded in secrecy. His Perfumery Code of Ethics, embraced by over a hundred entities, is nothing short of revolutionary, marking a turning point in a craft that spans millennia.
With some of his scent paraboles Black and white Mambo #5 mianki art gallery and KPM
Porcelaine Berlin and Silencethesea charm Strangelove NYC
CD: When did your passion for fragrances begin, and when did you realize it could become a profession?
CL: “As an intern in Flavor Chemistry at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was there I understood that this passion was not only a calling but a career.”
CD: Can you share an olfactory moment that deeply influenced your work?
CL: “Every time I smell a leather sofa, that scent the sublime leather transports me It takes me back to my childhood, to playing on Moroccan poufs, and the warm intimacy of wood-paneled rooms. This memory birthed Club Design, a fragrance initially for myself, later awarded when launched with The Zoo NYC. That exact inspiration also guided Richmess Original.”
CD: How do you approach creating a new fragrance? What sparks the process?
CL: “Inspiration always precedes ingredients. It’s never about a raw material but rather a scene or a character Marlene Dietrich, sailors, Mongolia, ski mountains. Light itself plays a crucial role; it’s almost a silent partner in creation.”
CD: Do you consider how a fragrance interacts with the wearer or environment?
CL: “The person wearing it is not my inspiration, but I am deeply concerned with tonality, shade, light, and complexity. I craft the olfactory narrative, and how it evolves is part of the story.”
CD: Which fragrance has inspired you the most?
CL: “I don’t seek inspiration from existing perfumes I take joy in well-made scents, but I mostly wear my own creations, often combined with others’ work. It’s about surfing emotions and styles variety is essential.”
CD: Have you ever modified a fragrance based on feedback?
CL: “Absolutely. In commercial perfumery, adaptation is frequent even excessive.”
CD: The sense of smell is deeply tied to memory. How do you use this connection?
CL: “People must learn to smell clearly. This is a mental discipline discerning whether your reaction is to the scent itself, a memory it triggers, or the presence or absence of qualities. It requires a Zen mindset.”.
CD: Do you have a signature ‘personal touch’ in your creations?
CL: “No. I try to give every scent its own.”
CD: How has public perception of fragrance evolved, and how do you adapt?
CL: “People wear and play with fragrances more than ever. I want them to inquire deeply about content, creation, quality, and especially about the creators behind the scents ”
Christophe Laudamiel is not merely a perfumer but a master storyteller his medium: molecules; his narrative: emotion. In the rarefied realm where scent becomes art, Christophe stands at the pinnacle of innovation and mastery. To walk alongside him is to witness fragrance’s transformation from olfactory notes into an immersive symphony of intellect and passion. As a young creator translating polyphonic music into polyaesthetic art where rigor meets opulence and innovation is the only language spoken I have learned from Christophe that fragrance is not an accessory; it is identity alive, breathing, commanding. It is not simply worn, but inhabited. Where others see bottles and blends, Christophe sees narratives stories of power, seduction, and timeless elegance. In my own work, I do not merely craft scents through music scores; I sculpt statements. Each creation is a manifesto: a whisper and a roar, a signature that transcends the ordinary, elevating the wearer beyond fashion and fragrance into an experience of pure style. With Christophe as my guide, I move beyond convention into a world where luxury is rigorous, innovation uncompromising, and every detail a note in the grand opus of style..
The company established by Vincenzo Viva had modest beginnings in 2011 on the East Coast of the USA. It initially focused on construction but has since diversified into several other industries, including commercial and industrial cleaning, furniture sales, magazines, tourism, real estate, and finally M&A and sales business consulting, with a global presence.