SIMONE STUTO – TU ERI ASSENTE
Inauguration Saturday 14 February
14 febbraio – 14 marzo 2026
Candy Snake Gallery, via degli Orombelli 15, Milano
Candy Snake Gallery is pleased to present You were absent, a solo exhibition by Simone Stuto curated by Mattia Lapperier.
The exhibition brings together a new cycle of works that explore the visionary potential of contemporary painting, moving in a dimension suspended between presence and absence, memory and imagination. The title, taken from an oil on panel by the artist, alludes to an emotional and perceptual state in which what is missing continues to affect the image, transforming painting into a threshold to be crossed.
In Stuto's works, the night is not simply a setting but an interior space, a symbolic territory where light and shadow clash without ever being resolved. Nocturnal landscapes, enigmatic gardens, and isolated figures emerge from intense fields of color, where color constructs the atmosphere and becomes a structuring element of the vision. Alongside the paintings, the exhibition includes a ceramic sculpture, which introduces a three-dimensional and material presence, extending the pictorial language into space and strengthening the dialogue between body, form, and symbol.
As Mattia Lapperier observes, Stuto's painting exists in a tension between order and abandon, between formal discipline and emotional momentum. References to medieval and Renaissance traditions coexist with a fully contemporary sensibility, giving rise to an imagery in which space is saturated with pictorial signs and figures seem to emerge from the very substance of color.
Tu eri assente thus takes the form of a slow and contemplative viewing experience, in which painting and sculpture combine to construct an intimate and symbolic environment, inviting the viewer to inhabit the ambiguity and mystery of the image.
Simone Stuto (1991, Caltanissetta) vive e lavora a Torino.
La sua ricerca pittorica si sviluppa come un viaggio simbolico nella dualità della natura umana, articolato in un dialogo costante tra luce e ombra, maschile e femminile, divino e umano, inizio e fine. In questo contesto, l’alchimia diventa metafora di trasformazione e presa di coscienza.
His works draw on a solid medieval and Renaissance iconographic tradition, reworked through a contemporary aesthetic and a strongly dreamlike dimension, in which spirit and matter, beauty and monstrosity coexist.
He has exhibited, among others, at the Regional Gallery of Palazzo Bellomo (Syracuse), Sacro Monte di Orta, Cappella Nuova (Orta San Giulio), Sanctuary of Hercules Victor – Hadrian’s Villa and Villa d’Este (Tivoli), Civic Gallery of Palazzo Moncada (Caltanissetta), Châssis (Turin), Candy Snake Gallery (Milan), Villa Ferrari (Castelnuovo Rangone – Modena), Curva Pura (Rome), ZAC – Zisa Contemporary Arts Zone (Palermo), Operativa Contemporary Art (Rome) and the Church of San Domenico (Palermo).
