Guendalina malatesta

Galleria Umberto Di Marino is pleased to announce Guendalina malatesta, Guendalina Cerruti’s first solo exhibition in Naples. For the occasion, the artist presents a new series of sculptural, environmental, and wall-based works developed around a precise tension: that between creative potential and constraint, between an imagination spiraling vertiginously inward upon itself and a reality that seeks to compress it.

Metal meshes, golden threads, and hundreds of butterflies recur insistently according to a logic that borders on obsession, yet is rooted in a slow and disciplined practice. The creative gesture takes on the contours of a manual and patient craft, close to an artisanal dimension in which repetition becomes both method and measure. Within this process, the DIY aesthetic emerges as a form of resistance: a resistance of the sensible against hyper-rationality and standardization, as a practice of redistributing value.

Through a system of references and accumulations, what is fragile, eccentric, or excessive is transformed into a language capable of generating meaning and establishing a direct relationship with the viewer. The micro is not synonymous with marginality; rather, it becomes a way of reading reality, capable of revealing the tensions of the present. What emerges are layered assemblages — between sculpture, collage, and personal narratives — that are fulfilled in the encounter with the spectator, at the point where the private dimension opens onto forms of shared affectivity.

The grid-like structures retain an ambivalent function, appearing as emotional barriers that both protect and separate. This new body of work reveals a dual nature: on the one hand, a dark and almost ominous tone; on the other, a vital and unpredictable energy. With Guendalina malatesta, Guendalina Cerruti investigates mental health in contemporary society, as well as the muted pressure that structures exert from within upon psychic and emotional life. Within this space, a weary and neurotic mind finds, in the moment of creation, a form of suspension and enchantment.