GIARDINI STUDIOS

GIARDINI STUDIOS is a foundation that works with contemporary artists. The goal of the foundation is to support artists at the emerging stage of their careers. Located in Pietrasanta, Tuscany, we provide access to spacious studios, marble quarries, bronze foundries, and ceramic kilns, empowering artists to explore a variety of mediums and experiment with new techniques. The foundation’s mission is to help artists to unlock their full potential by facilitating the production of innovative works in a supportive environment. GIARDINI STUDIOS also organizes exhibitions and showcases around the world. Founder: Emilian Zakharov @emeliyan.zakharov Managing Director and Curator: Sofya Simakova @sofya_simakova Photo credits: @maxavdeev

Apollinaria Broche @apobroche and her sculpture project “Attraverso l’Intreccio” have been named finalists for the second edition of the Ca’ del Bosco Sculpture Award @cadelbosco_official . Created at Giardini Studios, the project is presented alongside sketches and notes that reveal the research behind it. Thread holds a special place in Apollinaria’s practice, serving as a vehicle for memory and a fundamental formal element. The sculpture offers the viewer two modes of engagement: as a graphic structure to be observed within the landscape and as a physical experience to be lived by walking through it. This dialogue with space references the tradition of functional sculpture developed by Isamu Noguchi, who viewed play and movement as essential artistic forms. Cast in white bronze with optical glass lenses, the piece captures a unique tension between visible fragility and material solidity.

Created at Giardini Studios "Alchemy of the Image" by Vladimir Katrashov @kartashov.me explores the fragile boundary between transformation and control, between creation and projection. In the Hermetic tradition the labyrinth is not a structure but a journey – a path from decay through purification to unity. Vladimir translates this ancient metaphor into a contemporary narrative: a man cutting a female figure out of greenery, as if attempting to subdue life itself. Yet when transformation is replaced by control, the mystery turns into imitation. The woman made of leaves, once a symbol of wisdom and inner femininity, becomes an idol, an external form of what should have emerged from within. The labyrinth in the background serves as a quiet reminder: truth cannot be trimmed or sculpted. It reveals itself only through patience, humility and the courage to walk the full circle. Katrashov’s work speaks of this journey – the slow alchemy of dissolving illusion until the form appears on its own.

A new feature in NASTY Magazine @nastymagazine highlights the solo exhibition “The Mouth of the Vase” by Mathilde Albouy @mathildealbouy at Spazio Sassetti @spaziosassetti . Head to the project’s website to read the full article – and don’t miss the chance to see the show in person until May 12. The exhibition can be visited by appointment.

The sculptures of Apollinaria Broche @apobroche are populated by a multitude of female figures that transform into mythical beings. In her interpretation fairies, elves and celestial creatures appear both profoundly fragile and hauntingly eternal. In the artist’s hands ceramics take on the softness of skin and organic fluidity, giving the figures a tactile sensitivity and subtle expressiveness. Broche’s fantastical world is devoid of decorative sentimentality, her characters frozen in whimsical poses, intertwining with serpents or merging with seashells, explore the boundaries of corporeality and metamorphosis. Each sculpture becomes a meeting point of soft pastel hues, evoking a sense of being in another mystical dimension where beauty is inextricably linked to melancholy and mystery.

Arrangement with Chrysanthemums and Darkness (II), 2026 Poplar, Chinese ink, glass beads from the 19M foundation 174 x 117 x 113 cm Included in “The Mouth of the Vase,” a solo exhibition by @mathildealbouy produced by @giardini.studios on view at Spazio Sassetti until May 12!

Within digital platforms attention is continuously shaped and captured as behavioural data. Interfaces organise perception and produce gestures as part of their own operational logic. Scrolling functions as a bodily habit that also operates as micro-labour – a repetitive and disciplined movement formed by the interface itself. In “Finger Traces” by Alisa Yoffe @alisayoffe this gesture passes through the body, is recorded and then transferred onto the canvas. The image builds up through repeated finger traces on a smartphone screen, registering a specific mode of behaviour. Repetition forms a dense field, the surface emerges through the alternation of drawing and erasing black lines. Photo credits: Jacopo Bille @jacopobille

Vladimir Kartashov @kartashov.me and GOWEN @gowencontemporary are honored to present "Sequences of Time", a special project coinciding with the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Unfolding within the historic spaces of the island of San Clemente, the artist presents a series of site-specific works in the island’s church, as well as a planned artistic intervention at San Clemente Palace Venice. The project is built around the idea of metamorphosis as a state rather than a result, foregrounding vulnerability, instability, and constant transformation as fundamental conditions of existence. The exhibition featuring more than fifteen works considers architecture and art as bodies in a process of continuous change. In this context the church is perceived as a living organism that adapts to shifting conditions and absorbs layers of history where time is experienced as a sedimentation embedded in matter. We look forward to the public opening on May 8, 2026, in the presence of the artist, and we are pleased to share project sketches provided by Vladimir Kartashov.

Spazio Sassetti @spaziosassetti and Giardini Studios present The Mouth of the Vase, Mathilde Albouy’s @mathildealbouy first solo exhibition in Florence. The project brings together a new series of wooden sculptures created for the occasion alongside a selection of bronze works, all produced in collaboration with Giardini Studios. The exhibition explores the boundary between body and architecture through what the artist describes, for the first time, as “statues”, creating a sensorial threshold that simultaneously separates and connects. These sculptures behave less like objects and more like presences, inviting the viewer to navigate an unstable, inhabited space. The exhibition is open to visitors until May 12.

Sofya Simakova @sofya_simakova , Managing Director and Curator of Giardini Studios, for Il Giornale dell’Arte @ilgiornaledellarte : “I dream that our studios will grow into a large community – a place that attracts artists from all over the world. We are working to become strong partners for museums and institutions and to support our artists’ exhibitions not only creatively but also on the production and organisational level. And of course I would love to curate more and more exhibitions – it’s what I enjoy doing the most”. Read the full interview on the website of Il Giornale dell’Arte.

Spazio Sassetti and @giardini.studios are pleased to present The Mouth of the Vase, a solo exhibition by artist @mathildealbouy opening March 13th, 2026 from 18:00-22:00 Albouy’s sculptural vocabulary frequently departs from domestic typologies, displacing objects from their functional logic and reintroducing them as active agents within a spatial choreography that implicates the viewer’s body. What might initially appear familiar is subtly destabilized. Through shifts in scale, material, and placement, she reveals the latent ambiguity embedded in our perception of reality, proposing an in-between condition where binary thinking begins to dissolve. The exhibition unfolds as a total environment structured by thresholds and perceptual reversals. The gallery becomes a space that feels inhabited rather than displayed. Certain works assert an immediate presence, while others emerge gradually, almost incidentally, creating a quiet yet persistent tension. The atmosphere oscillates between intimacy and unease, sensuality and estrangement. The title The Mouth of the Vase evokes a porous, sensorial threshold, a warm liminal zone between interior and exterior, body and architecture. It suggests an opening that simultaneously separates and connects. Drawing from the terminology as well as philosophical principles of ikebana, the exhibition’s central suspended works Chrysanthemums and Darkness Arrangements resist literal representation and become rather beings in their own right. Throughout the exhibition, sculpture tends toward figuration without fully resolving into it. Albouy’s objects often acquire the presence of characters, gradually assuming distinct personalities. In this project, with resonance of Florence, she refers to them for the first time as “statues.” For the artist, they embody the essential attributes of statuary: monumentality and animacy, presence and projection, stillness charged with latent movement. Albouy (b. 1997, France) lives and works between Paris and Pietrasanta. Her works have been presented at the 19M (FR), FRAC Corsica (FR), Château La Coste (FR), Zhi Art Museum (CN), and Zuzeum Art Center (LV) amongst others.

Mathilde Albouy @mathildealbouy spoke to Exibart Magazine @exibart about her Widows series: "The colors and materials I choose derive directly from the meaning of the works themselves. There is a sort of 'material transvestism' at play as the wooden Widows take on the appearance of wrought iron. The Widows series features cases, resembling coffins, filled with foundry wax caught in a transitional phase. The wax frozen vertically on the wall makes it evident that it was arrested in its liquid state. It is a material that particularly attracts me, for example, due to its potential for infinite metamorphosis. While preparing the exhibition I studied the work of Eva Hesse and what Lucy Lippard wrote about it. For me it was essential to use materials, treatments, and surfaces that carried an authentic erotic and sensual potential – something that attracts as much as it can destabilize". The works were presented at Mathilde Albouy's solo exhibition at Galerie Derouillon @galeriederouillon .