Ludovico Bomben. Una figura continua a cercarmi – Until April 24

Galleria Michela Rizzo is pleased to present Una figura continua a cercarmi (A figure continues to seek me), a solo exhibition by Ludovico Bomben.

Installation View

Each work presented by Ludovico Bomben in this exhibition necessitates an exercise to reach completion, understood as the relationship between context and viewer that is established through the works. This obvious prerequisite should not override every expressive impulse contained within it but, rather, what will be the result of the exhibition is inscribed, by necessity, in the reciprocity opened by the artist.

The research of Ludovico Bomben has been well-defined for many years; in it emerge explicit references to iconology and iconography, to the combination between techniques and technicalities and to the formal rigor in which he encloses all this. If, at a first superficial glance, they could be dismissed as simple formal exercises, well, every work presented in this solo exhibition induces a cognitive effort, even minimal, to give completeness to the work itself. This is not to be understood as a lack, it is a precise necessity: to leave a margin of indeterminacy to the completion of the work.

Starting from the installation that gives the title to the exhibition, una figura continua a cercarmi, we are in a room surrounded by lettering applied to the wall in gold leaf. We should be able to complete the reading of the sentence only by scrolling our gaze along the entire perimeter, but we will never manage to interpose ourselves to it, in the space, to see its completeness. In so doing, while we memorize the finished sense of the sentence, the reflection of our figure mixes into every articulated word and disappears into the whiteness of the wall. Are we perhaps that figure?

Just as in the series of the work Seme, a 24-carat gold seed, the extreme approach to the work is not enough to grasp its features. We would have its completeness only through an instrument that enlarges its appearance. Perhaps this is the first time that the author gives us a tool to access the accuracy of the work. That seed completes itself within a packaging designed to contain 100 specimens, a meager quantity if compared to that of the work Sèma, where, by immersing the hands into the black parallelepiped, one can verify a great quantity of (real) seeds. In this case the dichotomy between a living element like the seed placed inside a sculpture that could recall a coffin seems explicit (Sèma is the tombstone). These three works, even if I would include a fourth, Lacrime #1 and #2, differ completely from a more recognized research of Ludovico. In them I found more the complete implementation between the indisputable formal capacity, the management of space, and the non-passive action of the viewer towards them. The path of the exhibition is enriched with other works, like the series of prints Sèma #1 in which the deep blacks are enriched by inserts in mirrored brass and open to the illusion of archetypal geometries. These black silhouettes change their shape in relation to the light that hits them. Some of their geometries allude to well-defined solids, almost renameable as synthetic representations of menhirs. In this series of prints, it is glaring how the composition harks back to the etymology of the term "sèma" (as a minimal linguistic unit cit.) and its declinations between semantics and sign. Ludovico seems to take steps backward to recover essentiality, reducing to the minimum the extension of the sign in favor of form.

In the next room, on the wall, Pioggia d’oro brings back to the formal accuracy of the Fendenti series. In this case as well the installation refers to a strong iconography, mixing matter and form, of a sign that wounds, or of a rain that fertilizes. Alongside, atop a pedestal, the matter of the sculpture lends itself to being content and container of an experience. Lacrime #1 excludes every reference with the outside to drag perception to a reserved gesture. The glass sculpture suggests, and the work on the wall underlines it, how an emotional practice can become language and how a sculpture can be an object to experience. Forms and materials of it bring the body closer to a knowledge no longer of passive but active fruition. This work, even if it appears so foreign from the rest of the exhibition, suggests again how the perception of ourselves in the context can pass both through a sort of contemplation towards the other, and from a practical action of ourselves.

For this solo exhibition of Ludovico Bomben I had to face a strange balance; the positive sensation that every work aimed to destabilize the first impression. The apparent presentiment of having to move toward and inside from the work to complete its sense, that every form could be a figure only by averting the gaze, shifting the reflection of ourselves toward it. I found myself wondering (and saying to the author himself) for the new works proposed in this exhibition, what is this figure? (that continues to seek me) "You are looking at something that you do not yet want to face, to which you do not yet feel like giving a name. You are circling around it and you continue to make us all circle. Sometimes you make us move away to look at the whole, other times you make us move closer to force us to the detail. Are we the instrument to measure your works?" Leaving the exhibition behind, it seems to me that Ludovico wanted to articulate the possibilities that sculpture proposes, to move beyond his utopia of world, space, place. An immediate language made of iconic chimeras. Objects that can be signs or instruments, images contained without scale or rooms dilated by the reflection. What is the best perception of this completed illusion? Are we the ones traversing these experiences or are they the ones passing beyond us? Is the work of Ludovico matter or idea?

Text by Michele Tajariol. Thanks go to for the collaboration and support: Simona Arnone, Theke Museum, Simone Scaramuzza, Verissima Fonderia Anonima, Cristian Tavan, Nicholas De Vecchio and Francesco Brocca.

Ludovico Bomben (Pordenone, 1982) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he completed the four-year course in Decoration B. His artistic research began with environmental light installations, conceived to redefine spaces and alter the perception of those who inhabit them. In recent years, Bomben has shifted his attention from the environment to the object, exploring the relations between matter, language, form and concept. This path has led him to use symbols of sacred origin as new territories of investigation. Through a balance of golden proportions and formal rigor, the artist aims to reinterpret and redefine the image of the sacred in a contemporary key, blending ancient traditions and innovative industrial materials.

He has exhibited in numerous public and private spaces, including the 54th Venice Biennale, the Talent Prize, Dolomiti Contemporanee, the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, the Tina B Festival in Prague, the Premio Fabbri, Villa Manin, CAREOF Via Farini, the Premio Cramum, the Museo Revoltella and the Premio Cairo at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In parallel, he has deepened his skills in the fields of design, planning and graphics, collaborating with various companies in the Pordenone area.

In 2021 he participated in the exhibition Non c'è + nessun Virgilio a guidarci nell'inferno, curated by Martina Cavallarin, at Open Dream in Treviso; he took part in the Premio Cramum at Villa Mirabello, Milan, curated by Sabino Maria Frassà; he participated in the Futuro Arcaico Fest, curated by Maria Teresa Salvati, at the Museo Civico of Bari, and in the Premio Musica Pordenone, curated by Patrizio De Mattio, at the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone. In 2022 he exhibits in the collective exhibition Who Killed Bambi, curated by Gianluca d’Incà Levis, at Dolomiti Contemporanee – Nuovo Spazio di Casso (PN). In 2023 he is the protagonist of the exhibition Equorea (of seas, ice, clouds and other waters), curated by Giulia Bortoluzzi, hosted by Buildingbox in Milan. In the same year he exhibits in the collective exhibition American Beauty. Da Robert Capa a Banksy at the Centro Culturale Altinate San Gaetano in Padua. In 2024 he creates the solo exhibition Hic Sunt Leones, curated by Angelo Bertani, at the Galleria Sagittaria in Pordenone, and wins the second prize of the Mellone Art Prize at the National Museum of Science and Technology "Leonardo da Vinci" in Milan. Between 2024 and 2025 he presents the solo exhibition AERE Pratiche di avvicinamento (AERE Approaches) at GMR.2 (Galleria Michela Rizzo, Mestre), from December 5, 2024 to January 24, 2025. In 2025 he participates in several exhibitions of importance: the collective exhibition Stralûs. 1985-2025 Arte in Friuli / Art in Friûl (April 4-May 11) at Palazzo Ragazzoni in Sacile, curated by Magali Cappellaro and Alberto Vidissoni (University of Udine); the double solo exhibition Doppio Dialogo at Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo in Venice, curated by Almerinda Di Benedetto, Enrico Lucchese and Alessandra Santin; the collective exhibition Together / Insieme Exhibition 1 (February 4-15) at the Biblioteca Salaborsa in Bologna; and the double solo exhibition Vuoto-Semi-Vuoto, with Francesca Dondoglio, at Studio La Linea Verticale (Bologna, January 30-March 1).