Bowman Hal presents Imminence, the new exhibition by Italian artist Siro Cugusi, on view through 31 January at the gallery’s SOLO CSV space, located at Cuesta de San Vicente 36, Madrid. The show brings together a selection of works, most of them large-scale, in which Cugusi unfolds his distinctive visual universe: reinvented landscapes, reconfigured classical symbolism, and scenes that expand the boundary between the real and the imagined.
In Imminence, each work functions as a visual poem that invites viewers to abandon strict logic and step into a territory where emotion and intuition build worlds that evoke possible —and potentially imminent— futures. Cugusi revisits traditional genres —landscape, still life, portraiture— transforming them into hybrid settings where geometries, tubular structures, everyday objects and exuberant vegetation coexist. His compositions, marked by a diversity of perspectives and a gestural use of colour, evoke Renaissance echoes, the metaphysical atmosphere of Surrealism, and cinematic contemporary references.
Nature occupies a central role in these pieces, always transformed and in dialogue with artificial elements. In his landscapes, lush fields intersect with brilliant blue seas, organic forms coexist with enigmatic symbols, and a recurring red spiral, inspired by Nuragic iconography from Sardinia, becomes a motif of life, cycles and permanence. “I think a work should be complex enough to offer new secrets,” Cugusi explains. His practice emerges from a process of long layering, additions, removals and continuous re-readings.
His painting is also a physical experience: expansive formats that envelop the viewer, and pathways that invite us to enter uninhabited landscapes. The artist describes his method as a continuous search, a way of losing himself within the works. “My painting is not a planned act: the images grow within the canvas. I work by adding and removing elements, in a process that functions like a conversation between past and present, where some forms emerge and others remain concealed.”
This dynamic, metamorphic character is also evident in his approach to the body, understood as a space of transformation and tension between identities, natures and memories. “I’m interested in the in-between point, the place between the real and the surreal, between the natural and the artificial; that is where painting appears,” the artist notes.
The exhibition in Madrid, open to the public free of charge at SOLO’s venue on Cuesta de San Vicente 36 until 31 January, coincides with his participation in Italy’s landmark art event, the Quadriennale di Roma, and with a recent solo show in Anruma Gallery in Naples.
As part of Bowman Hal’s annual programme, Imminence continues the gallery’s commitment to presenting contemporary languages “capable of moving, challenging and expanding the viewer’s experience,” explains its director, Mun-Jung Chang. With this exhibition, Bowman Hal continues the programme it launched in June with the work of Australian artist William Mackinnon.
