MATtam 83
Manto Arte Temporanea | Temporary Art Manto
short exhibitions in found spaces
Sala Ex Mondadori | Palazzo Te | Mantua
Bruno Lucca
Silent waits
Sunday January 25th 2026
only between 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM
For over twenty years, my work has primarily focused on themes of transience, ephemerality, and oblivion. Technically, I employ tools and materials that operate through representational subtraction, restoring only the evanescence or shadows of the subjects depicted. The images thus produced appear uncertain between their completion and their dissolution, poised on a threshold in a state of obstinate openness or inexhaustible movement, evoking figures or forms that are clearly visible yet insubstantial, devoid of corporeal substance.
Silent waits, the series of works painted since 2018 that I am presenting here, also focus on these themes. The dark background and the subject's position are inspired by Renaissance portraiture, particularly Flemish art. They depict shadows or figures painted with diaphanous, light and uniform layers or barely hinted at with a few strokes of white pastel, enveloped in a flow of black matter. They are apparitions suspended on the threshold of another dimension, livid and undefined but characterised by an attentive and penetrating gaze, silent presences awaiting answers.
Bruno Lucca was born in Nove, Vicenza, in 1961. After graduating in Painting under Emilio Vedova at the Venice Academy, he was awarded a studio by the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation at Palazzo Carminati. In 2001, he met Turin-based gallery owner Alberto Weber, with whom he collaborates regularly. In 2010, his gallery was a finalist for the Young Collectors Award at the Rome-The Road to Contemporary Art fair at Macro Future.
He has exhibited in solo shows at the Peccolo gallery in Livorno, the Totem gallery in Venice, and the Atlantica gallery in Vicenza, as well as in public spaces at the University of Pavia and at AB23, a contemporary art gallery in Vicenza.
He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, both in galleries and public spaces, including the Palacio de Lombillo in Havana, the Roonee 247 Fine Arts in Tokyo, the Malerba Fund for Photography in Milan, the CRAC (Center for Contemporary Art Research of the Rocco Spani Foundation Onlus) in Taranto, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa, the Fondazione 107 and Palazzo Bricherasio in Turin, the Garuzzo Institute for the Visual Arts in London, the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Trevi Flash Art Museum, the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice, the Galleria Civica in Modena, and Casabianca Museum in Malo. He lives and works in Vicenza, where he shares the Incipit studio with other artists in a former late-19th-century industrial complex.
"If the consistency of the representation approaches a breath of light, the promise of a precious intimacy with the unspeakable, from which every image truly originates, comes true." Donata Negrini
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