Giacomo Piussi “Friends of Friends”. - 2025

The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to announce “Friends of Friends”, The opening reception will be held on Saturday July 12th , from 5 pm to 7pm, 

 “Friends of Friends” explores a playful world where dreams and reality meld together to create surreal moments. When engaging with Piussi's work, we enter an arena where we are immersed in childlike delight. We experience snapshot images of a world reduced to its essence, in a seemingly comic-book style that has echoes of Giotto and Paolo Uccello, and even of medieval illuminations. 

 My work is simple: the subject matter is stripped to basics, so all that is engagement, controversy and links to reality is taken away, and what remains is an icon with an aura of philosophical suspension, and a window into the enigma of existence. The drawings on which the paintings are built from are precise and have the same aim as those made by cavemen, which was to give a shape to their desires, their dreams.

The broad repertoire of his paintings, with their naturalistic color and semi-abstract shapes, presents us with Piussi’s views concerning our contemporary lives. Rather than mimic the appearance of nature, Piussi reaches for its essence, in visions that are devoid of distracting details. 

Piussi was born in 1967 in Udine and raised in Florence, where he majored in sculpture at the Institute d’Arte. He completed his artistic education at Milano's Brera Art Academy, where he majored in painting. Piussi went on to live in Florence, where he now pursues his passion for painting, bronze, terracotta sculpture and bas-reliefs. Giacomo Piussi has exhibited in Florence, Rome, Milan and Berlin.  After numerous group shows at the Robin Rice Gallery, this is his second solo exhibition.