On Friday 21 August at 6.00 pm, Denis Isaia, Francesca Cattoi and Lorenzo D’Anteo will meet in the CAMeC Project Room to discuss the exhibition, on view until 30 August 2026.
What happens when the memory of the great pictorial tradition encounters images, objects and fragments drawn from contemporary visual culture? On Friday 21 August at 6.00 pm, we will host “Quasi picturae: il nobile e l’ignobile” in the CAMeC Project Room, an event exploring Lorenzo D’Anteo’s artistic practice and the works featured in the exhibition Quasi picturae.
Together with Denis Isaia, Francesca Cattoi and Lorenzo D’Anteo, we will examine the exhibition through painting: the central expressive medium in the artist’s work, but also an open territory in constant dialogue with sculpture, drawing, assemblage and objects.
Between the noble and the ignoble
The title of the event refers to one of the central tensions running through D’Anteo’s work: the encounter between the legacy of Renaissance and Baroque figurative painting and imagery drawn from everyday experience, popular culture and the underground scene.
Learned references, grotesque elements, ordinary objects and forms of unsettling irony coexist within the works, continually questioning the boundaries between high and low, precious and marginal, familiar and unexpected.
Painting beyond the surface
The works presented in Quasi picturae are “almost paintings” not because they abandon painting, but because they expand its possibilities.
The painted surface enters into a relationship with volume, matter, construction and assemblage. Painting opens onto a deliberately hybrid territory, where creative impulse, iconographic memory and contemporary imagery meet and transform one another.
“Alfabeto ad Olio”
At the heart of the exhibition is “Alfabeto ad Olio”—Oil Alphabet—a series of paintings on small canvases created during the pandemic.
The letters of the alphabet become the starting point for compositions made up of figures, objects, fragments and personal or domestic suggestions. The resulting visual vocabulary allows apparently recognisable elements to acquire an ambiguous and, at times, unsettling quality.
The speakers
Francesca Cattoi, born in La Spezia in 1968, works in contemporary art research and the development of exhibition projects.
Denis Isaia, born in Turin in 1974, has worked as an art curator since 2006 and currently heads the Collections Department at Mart – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto.
Their conversation with Lorenzo D’Anteo will offer an opportunity to explore the sources, languages and tensions underpinning his artistic practice.
The CAMeC Project Room
The event is part of the programme of our Project Room, the ground-floor space dedicated to research, experimentation and independent exhibition projects.
An accessible and continually evolving environment, designed to create new opportunities for audiences to encounter artists and the languages of contemporary art.
Practical information
Quasi picturae: il nobile e l’ignobile
A conversation with Denis Isaia, Francesca Cattoi and Lorenzo D’Anteo
Date: Friday 21 August 2026
Time: 6.00 pm
Venue: CAMeC Project Room
Address: Piazza Cesare Battisti 1, La Spezia
Exhibition: Lorenzo D’Anteo, Quasi picturae, on view until 30 August 2026
Admission to the Project Room: free