Monica De Cardenas presents "Intimate Tales", a new exhibition featuring Leonardo Devito, Louis Fratino, Nikki Maloof, Danielle Orchard and Alessandro Teoldi, a group of friends, as well as artists. As often happens among friends, things take shape without a declared plan, without too much discussion. They unfold almost out of necessity. "Intimate Tales" is born this way, from a shared narrative that, once begun, reveals deep connections: a common attitude toward drawing and painting, a certain way of looking at 20th-century art - cubism, expressionism and magical realism – and a search that oscillates between everyday experience and imagination.
Leonardo Devito (*1997, Florence, lives in Turin)
Deeply inspired by the Renaissance tradition, Devito begins from an initial mental image, then lets painting guide the creative process, expanding, transforming, and ultimately dissolving it. The drawings in the show seem to evoke a dreamlike context, where explicit references to 14th- and 15th-century Italian art intertwine with contemporary elements creating a "fragmentation of periods." In this dialogue between eras and languages, Devito combines realism and the fantastical, shaping alternative worlds where the familiar turns into something unexpected.
Louis Fratino (*1993, Annapolis, Maryland, lives in New York)
Fratino is known for his paintings and drawings that portray male bodies and capture the intimacy and tenderness of queer daily life. He believes that "painting is the physical manifestation of an inner dialogue." In his subjects, which include the artist himself, his partner, friends and family, the human body becomes a form and expression of urgent emotional charge. Until May 2025 he is the subject of a solo show at the Luigi Pecci Museum in Prato, and his works were one of the highlights of the Venice Biennale in 2024.
Nikki Maloof (*1985, Peoria, Illinois, lives in New York), who is exhibiting in Italy for the first time, explores the world of everyday objects through a series of pencil drawings where food, the table, and domestic elements take center stage. Like in Domenico Gnoli's works, Maloof's objects are isolated and enlarged, imbued with a presence that makes them more than mere everyday items. The variety of objects depicted by Maloof does not reveal the surrounding world but, on the contrary, operates through exclusion, inserting itself into the world, constructing an image that seems to want to reveal the very essence of things.
Danielle Orchard (*1985, Fort Wayne, Indiana, lives in New York) Over the years, the female body and motherhood have become central themes in her artistic research. These themes find expression in a series of charcoal drawings that explore the intimacy and physicality of these experiences. Her female figures, inspired by the modernist tradition, stand out for a sensitivity that delicately conveys the emotional sphere of care and protection. Her way of representing the bond between women and their own bodies reveals a deep intimacy with these themes, which emerge not only as iconographic subjects but as lived experiences. In Orchard's drawings, bodies brush against each other, intertwine in gestures of affection and contact communicating a palpable tenderness. The American artist, already well-known internationally, is exhibiting in Italy for the first time.
Alessandro Teoldi (*1987, Milan, lives in New York) constructs his narrative through visual fragments collected over time: snapshots saved on his phone, as well as images retrieved from a personal archive. The body of collages on display is created by painting on paper with oil, acrylic, pastel, and charcoal. The result is an in-depth analysis of the collage process which Teoldi began exploring over the past two years as a natural evolution of his work with fabric. This transition represents an extension of his artistic research, where the act of cutting and layering becomes an investigation into memory, composition, and the transformation of matter.
