Private Rooms

by Giovanni Leonardo Bassan

25 April — 31 July 2024

Giovanni Leonardo Bassan (1989) is a multidisciplinary Italian artist, based in Paris. His artistic training began at the Art School A. Martini, Schio and continued at the Politecnico di Milano, where he graduated in industrial design in 2011. Bassan’s oeuvre transmits sensibility of classical tradition and a dynamism of abstract expression, with multiple layers of paint and symbols, superimposed on each other. His paintings are a journey from the Parisian heterotopias to contemporary literature, music and fashion. His ceramic sculptures explore the visual narrative of the corporeal, creating another dimension to the research within his painterly practice. Bassan’s diverse body of work embraces painting, sculpture, ceramics, and furniture design, offering us an alternative approach towards all these mediums. He has presented his work internationally, in solo and group exhibitions.

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“People are too various to be treated lightly. 

I am too various to be trusted.”

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

Giovanni Leonardo Bassan’s paintings are constructs of memories that get together on a canvas. The works presented at Sainte Anne Gallery are all portraits of Bassan’s community. The tender dynamism, tonal subtlety, and generous textures embrace a depth in understanding how Giovanni perceives his subjects with a seductive curiosity, wandering on a fine line between softness and roughness of depiction. The heavily layered composition of the paintings gradually flows from abstraction to figuration, with the figures emerging from multiple sketches and abstract brushstrokes.

Apart from his paintings, Bassan introduces us to his ceramic sculptures. Their corporeal shapes seem to have come out of the canvas and liberated themselves within the space.

As you enter the gallery you are greeted by two ceramic chairs, welcoming you to the room of portraits. The chairs shown at the gallery are inspired by archival pieces from Bassan’s family furniture business in Italy. The artist used an original chair from the 60’s designed by his grandfather and reassembled it with ceramic elements. The sculptures are therefore a dialogue with the family heritage, integrating the fine lines and solid structure of the original project with the characteristic expressionism of Bassan’s own practice.

On the upper floor the atmosphere becomes much more intimate, with a hand made mattress laying on the floor suggesting all kinds of unspoken symbolism, drawings, paintings, and sculptures arranged in their own chaos, just like in the artist’s studio. Both floors of the gallery are a careful choreography of Bassan’s totems, inviting us to his ‘private rooms’. 

— Alicja Brzeska