Broken Flowers

Galleria Giovanni Bonelli is pleased to present, at its Milan venue, BROKEN FLOWERS, a group exhibition featuring works by Manuel Esposito, Cristiano Pizzi, Flaminia Veronesi, Davide Volpi, and Andreas Zampella, curated by Gherardo Quadrio Curzio.

Broken Flowers outlines a shared horizon in narrating the everyday and the ordinary with delicacy and nostalgia. The impact with reality is both intense and suspended—sharpened by a disillusioned, charismatic irony that moves freely and plays with the elements of simplicity, even brushing up against the fantastic. Because this is how reality can become acceptable: it must be betrayed. It needs to be exaggerated, made nearly impossible, in order for us to perceive it as credible and true—to transform it into something else in order to truly see it for what it is. Beauty and bitterness coexist within the ordinary, just as irony and imagination are needed to shape and soften it. Outside of reality, reality becomes real.
With a pace that is slow yet sprightly, the distinct yet complementary languages of the five artists on view branch out across the exhibition. Into this lively rhythm enter the works of Flaminia Veronesi and Manuel Esposito, moving through a colorful and decaying fantastical realm—at once playful and carefree, yet also restless and grotesque. Andreas Zampella offers a reimagining of everyday objects, stained and torn yet always graceful, vibrant, and anthropomorphic. The softness of layered forms defining Cristiano Pizzi’s subjects contrasts with the meticulous linework of Davide Volpi and the theatrical prominence of his thick, heavy frames. Yet, the two return to harmony in their shared ability to convey a muted, faded sense of image—a bitter experience of reality that inevitably connects all the works on display.

Manuel Esposito
Manuel Esposito (b. 1999, Monza) is an Italian artist working with sculpture, photography, and video. His practice combines a descriptive approach with ironic and satirical tones, alongside a meticulous observation of popular culture.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in New Technologies of Art from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he is currently enrolled in the Master’s program in Painting.

Cristiano Pizzi
Cristiano Pizzi (b. 1999, Legnano) lives and works in Milan. He studied Painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, completing his studies in 2023.
His artistic practice weaves together painting and storytelling, transforming marginal figures and everyday details into visual narratives. His is a delicate yet layered style of painting, built through gently superimposed translucent washes. Alongside this formal composure, brutal figures emerge—referencing punk and underground imagery. Within this tension, literary and esoteric references find their place, appearing as visions suspended between the sacred and the ordinary.
Thus, painting becomes both an ironic and poetic language, capable of giving voice to singular perspectives and to what usually remains in the background.

Flaminia Veronesi
Flaminia Veronesi (b. 1986, Milan) lives and works in Milan. Veronesi explores the realms of the fantastical and the marvelous through a playful approach to artistic practice. She creates heterogeneous works using a wide range of media and materials, treating them without hierarchy. Her work spans textile pieces, sculptures in polymer clay, ceramics, bronze, pencil drawings, paintings, watercolors, glass engravings, video, and installations. From 2005 to 2020, she lived between London and Paris. She attended the Foundation Course at Central Saint Martins (2006) and earned a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts (2009). In 2025, Flaminia created the Bee Awards—bronze prizes commissioned by Triennale Milano for the 24th International Exhibition. She was also selected to design one of the official art posters for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. In 2024, she was among the 20 finalists for the Premio Cairo. “Maternità Sociale. GrandeMadreMamma”, Galleria Simondi, Turin (2024); “Popplay”, Galleria Tommaso Calabro, Milan (2024); “The Hermitcrab’s Wundershell”, Marni flagship store, Milan (2023);
“Erbario e Bestiario del Meraviglioso”, Botanical Garden, Palermo (2023); “Garden of Fantasy”, T Magazine, Villa Necchi Campiglio (2022); “Masculin/Féminine”, Castiglioni Fine Arts Gallery, Milan (2021). “Pittura Italiana”, curated by Damiano Gullì, Triennale Milano (2023); “Embryonic Journey”, Richard Saltoun Gallery, Rome (2025); “MoonKillers”, curated by Antonio Grulli, Tommaso Calabro, Venice (2025); “Eddlesea. Il tempo metabolico”, curated by Andrea Lerda, Posibila Gallery, Bucharest (2024); “Le diable au corps”, curated by Massimo Mattioli and Daniele Capra, Galleria Bonelli, Canneto sull’Oglio (2024); “Per grazia ricevuta”, curated by Alberto Mattia Martini, Galleria Bonelli, Milan (2024); “Connecting Worlds”, Musée des Merveilles, and the residency project Living Room, Associazione Artur, Cuneo—both curated by Andrea Lerda (2022–2021); “Look at Me”, Milan, curated by OTTN Projects (2022); “La Fiabesca”, Galleria Bonelli, Pietrasanta (2022); “Party”, curated by the Die Sonnenstube collective, Lugano (2022).

Davide Volpi
Davide Volpi (b. 1996 in Fiorenzuola d’Arda, Piacenza) lives and works between Piacenza and Milan. In 2022, he obtained a Master’s Degree (Diploma Accademico di II Livello) in Painting from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he subsequently served for two years as Cultore della Materia (Teaching Assistant) for the course Practical and Cultural Aspects of Performance, led by Giacomo Agosti. In 2024, his work was featured in a two-person exhibition titled Zwischenzug, held at the Ferrobedò space (Via Moscova 40, Milan). That same year, he also took part in several group exhibitions, including NOVECENTO. Il secolo lungo at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli in Milan—curated by Stefano Castelli and accompanied by an original text by Aldo Nove—and La città: tra realtà e sogno at Galleria San Fedele, Milan (2024).

Andreas Zampella
Andreas Zampella (b. 1989) is an artist from the Campania region of Italy. Zampella lives and works between Milan and Campania. After earning a degree in Decoration from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, he moved to Milan, where he developed a multidisciplinary practice combining painting, sculpture, and installation. He works with clay, oil paint, and humble materials, favoring a raw and symbolic language. His works stage objects suspended between life and death, turning them into protagonists of a motionless, silent theater. Painting functions as set design, while sculptures act as props—each element contributing to the construction of a stage where reality appears distorted, suspended, and constantly shifting between presence and absence. Zampella starts from the idea that everyday life is a continuous performance, and that still life has become the purest form of spectacle today. His work reflects deeply on themes such as emptiness and solitude, with a poetics that blends theatricality and stillness. He constructs pieces that oscillate between fatigue and tension, irony and melancholy, obligation and boredom. His installations resemble half-open thresholds: they evoke an action that has either just failed to happen or is about to occur—a suspended moment of unresolved waiting. The human presence disappears in favor of objects, which seem imbued with their own inner sensitivity. In this way, the artwork becomes a silent spectacle, questioning the viewer about the possibility of a voiceless narrative, and about the meaning of representation in the present day.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Passaggio al buio, as part of the Portfolio series by the Quadriennale di Roma at Palazzo Braschi (2023); Dove nascono gli uccelli, Nashira Gallery, Milan (2023); Eravamo cuori in Atlantide, Z2O Project, Rome (2024). Selected group exhibitions include: Lettere intorno ad un giardino, curated by Marta Ferrara and Mario Francesco De Simone, Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Naples (2024); Premio Lissone, curated by Francesca Guerisoli, Museo di Lissone (2023); Di città, di boschi, di uccelli, curated by Lucrezia Longobardi and Nora De Blasio, Officine San Carlo, Naples (2022).