Manuel Felisi: “Vertigini” at San Polo Art Gallery, Venice
First Art Exhibition in Venice and New Collaboration
San Polo Art Gallery is pleased to present to the Venetian and international public the works of Manuel Felisi, a visual artist and one of the most original figures on the Italian contemporary art scene.
For the first time in Venice, the works from the “Vertigini” series are exhibited in preview in our space, marking the beginning of a new and significant collaboration.
This Venetian presentation marks Felisi’s entry into the gallery’s program and opens a dialogue that will evolve over time. His research, focused on themes such as memory, stratification, nature, and time, fits perfectly within the spirit of the lagoon city, which has always been a crossroads of cultures and visual languages.
Vertigine, 220x146, mixed media on canvas, 2021
Vertigine, 87x117, mixed media on canvas, 2025
Manuel Felisi and the “VERTIGINI” seires: a visual and sensory experience
The Vertigini series is one of the most intense and recognizable projects by Manuel Felisi. The works presented in the gallery are built through a language that combines photography and painting, shaping mental landscapes in which the natural subject is deconstructed, multiplied, and recomposed according to modules.
In the works of this series, trees and branches become emotional grids that reflect on the relationship between time and perception. The images, drawn from the artist’s photographic archives and often taken during walks in the woods, are painted, printed, and layered with pigments and repeated painterly marks, generating a vibrant surface, rich in rhythm and memory.
The visual effect evokes a true “perceptual vertigo”, but also an emotional one: the eye gets lost in the details, while the mind is led on a journey through memories, fragments, and inner tensions.
Vertigine, 160x110, 2019
The poetics of Manuel Felisi: Nature, Time, Memory
Born in Milan in 1976, Manuel Felisi trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. His production stands out for its strong linguistic coherence and the use of mixed techniques, where photography, painting, and installation coexist.
At the heart of his poetics is time: not only as a theme but as a concrete material, sedimented in the work through repeated gestures, overlapping layers, and materials that tell of lived experience. His works are often constructed on wooden panels and canvases, using natural elements – branches – as devices of memory.
In particular, in cycles such as “Vertigini”, “Rigenerazioni”, “Uno a uno”, or “Radici”, the artist works on the tension between order and chaos, between figuration and abstraction, between presence and dissolution. Nature is the starting point for a broader reflection on identity, impermanence, and the relationship between man and the environment.
A significant presence in Italian Contemporary Art
The works of Manuel Felisi have been exhibited in important museums and public and private spaces, including:
- Carlo Bilotti Museum (Villa Borghese, Rome) – 2024
- Ducal Palace (Genoa) – 2022
- Bevilacqua Palace (Bologna) – 2020
- Botanical Garden of Palermo – 2019/2020
- Salone del Mobile (Milan) – 2013
- Made Expo Evento Planetarium (Milan) – 2012
- Rotonda Della Besana (Milan) – 2011
- Vertical Museum permanent exhibition, Lombardy Region Palace (Milan) – 2011
Appreciated for the evocative power of his language and his ability to give visual form to complex emotional states, Felisi today represents one of the most sensitive and recognizable voices in Italian contemporary art.
With the arrival of the works from the Vertigini series in Venice, a new chapter in his exhibition research begins — in a context where his themes – stratification, time, nature as memory – find an ideal mirror.
When: every day, except Tuesday, from 10:30 AM to 7:00 PM
Where: San Polo Art Gallery
Salizada San Polo 2102 – Venice
t. +39 333.39.59.872 – t. +39 393.98.56.018
info@sanpoloartgallery.it
FREE ADMISSION
Press Contact:
Beatrice Mantovano
+39 342.80.28.753
beatrice@sanpoloartgallery.it
