Paolo Battistutta - Transits

The show encapsulates both our present and the essence of his practice, naming the constant shift between figuration - faces, portraits, human presence - and the abstract-informal field - the celebrated tondos and beyond. Timed with Frieze London the exhibition enters the wider conversation animating the city's contemporary art scene that week.

On large canvases, Battistutta stages a visceral confrontation with painting: matter and thought, gesture and figure push the image beyond its boundaries. Paint becomes psyche - emotion before figure - driven by an informal, impulsive energy. His monumental visages, cut through by vivid chromatic fields, open a journey into interiority: less "beautiful" portraits than raw mirrors of vulnerability, where deformation sharpens insight.

The other pole of his work unfolds in the tondos: dynamic, layered masses radiating a primordial energy-arenas of impulses, events and tensions-where the circular form offers unity alongside maximum compositional freedom. Here the ego recedes, form fractures, and an almost iconoclastic impulse advances; painting becomes a transit of body and soul.

The exhibition is organised by Cris Contini Contemporary, coordinated by Sandra Sanson, and accompanied by a catalogue published by Grafica Antiga, featuring critical texts by Lorena Gava, Pasquale Lettieri, Cristian Contini, and Fulvio Granocchia.

Exhibition details:

Title: Paolo Battistutta - TRANSITS
Venue: Cris Contini Contemporary, 1 Lonsdale Road W11 2BY, Notting Hill, London
Dates: 14 October - 15 November 2025

Vernissage: 14 October 2025 at 6:00 PM