For the first time, KROMYA Art Gallery presents a solo exhibition split between its two locations in Lugano and Verona. The featured artist is Sergio Fermariello (Naples, 1961), known for making the spear-armed warrior his signature motif. 

Curated by Demetrio Paparoni, the exhibition will open on Tuesday, September 17, in the Lugano gallery and on Saturday, September 20, in the Verona gallery. Both the artist and the curator will be present at both openings, which are scheduled for 6:00 PM. 

The title of the exhibition – Meridiano – refers to a mental space, a horizon of intentions, and the mindset of a hemisphere that dictates slow rhythms. Through the repetition of his mark, the artist carves out time, one of the greatest riches of the present. 

“Since his early work, Sergio Fermariello’s art has been characterized by a melancholy that fuels the search for a lost memory, essential for redefining personal and collective identity,” wrote Demetrio Paparoni about him. “From this state of mind, Fermariello began, even as a student, a process of distilling the human figure, reducing it to a few essential lines and finding in the image of the warrior the expression of man’s essence. The warrior represents a controlled, obsessive mark, repeated like a mantra in the hope that, in the end, something extreme will happen, something so extreme that it marks a point of death necessary for a rebirth. The stylized figure is the artist with a brush in hand who, having become a warrior, obsessively repeats his consent to what he is doing. He stands there, defending the idea that the artist is always engaged in fighting his own battle. In this sense, its meaning lies in the mark itself that composes it.” 

“In my practice,” says Sergio Fermariello, “I cultivate the mark to the point of obsession, following a compulsion to repeat that goes beyond the pleasure principle. I am not interested in the meaning, even though the figure of the warrior carries numerous symbols. My goal is to recover this archetype, which in the past would have transformed into a deity, to restore the sense of belonging to a greater destiny that does not betray us and that synchronizes us with the group self in a single creative act.” 

The exhibition, spread across the two galleries in Lugano and Verona, includes around thirty recent works, many of which are previously unseen. In addition to the steel canvases, which sometimes appear as bas-reliefs, and acrylics on paper, the exhibition also features a Tela scrittura (Writing Canvas), a work drawn over time in which the mark, seen from a distance, becomes abstract, and a totemic sculpture in shades of orange. A symbolic bridge between the two locations is the sculpture titled Knot, composed of two galvanized iron pipes with a constriction in the middle, a knot that slows the flow of water, alluding to other possible paths and escape routes. 

During the exhibition, a catalog will be published and available at the gallery, featuring an unpublished critical essay by Demetrio Paparoni and documentation of the exhibited works.