Embryonic Journey is a group exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery in Rome featuring works by Claudia Di Francesco, Cleo Fariselli, Armida Gandini, and Flaminia Veronesi. This exhibition unfolds as a voyage into the intimate reflections of four artists, where themes of mythology, metamorphosis, dreams, and archetypes of human psychology intertwine. Positioned within a liminal space—a threshold populated by fantastical characters, anthropomorphic forms, flows of matter and energy, and reminiscences drawn from art history—the exhibition explores the interplay of light, color, and shadow.

From Cleo Fariselli’s evocative, dark backdrops conjuring imaginary landscapes and inner depths to the emotional intensity of Armida Gandini’s sculptures—mirages of beauty, pain, and meaning—and the ethereal visions of Claudia Di Francesco and Flaminia Veronesi’s utopian worlds, the exhibition invites the viewer on a collective journey through contrasting yet harmonious artistic expressions.

Among the four featured artists, Armida Gandini's work stands out as a profound meditation on fluidity, continuity, and transformation. Born in Brescia in 1968, Gandini presents an installation comprising eight collages and Murano glass sculptures inspired by the face of Mary from Rogier van der Weyden’s The Seven Sacraments triptych (c. 1444). Through this reinterpretation, she delves into themes of devotion, sorrow, and the passage of time, infusing her works with deep historical and emotional resonance.

Gandini’s use of Murano glass reflects her interest in the slow, layered process of creation. Inspired by Roland Barthes’s Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse, in which tears symbolize infinite continuity, her glass sculptures are meticulously formed drop by drop. This method highlights water as a primordial element tied to creation, fluidity, and pain, making her work an embodiment of emotional and physical transformation. The translucency of the glass captures the delicate balance between fragility and resilience, reinforcing the idea that emotions, like water, are constantly shifting, shaping, and reforming themselves. Her pieces embody a visual poetics of impermanence, where every droplet and reflection contributes to an evolving narrative of personal and collective memory.

Her collages further expand on this exploration of fluidity and metamorphosis. By deconstructing and reassembling images, Gandini creates a visual dialogue that blurs the boundaries between past and present, sacred and profane, reality and dream. The interplay of textures, colors, and fragmented imagery mirrors the impermanence and flux of human emotions. These collages, like her sculptures, are shaped by a process of layering and sedimentation, evoking the passage of time and the accumulation of memories.

In the broader context of the exhibition, Gandini’s work aligns with the thematic concerns explored by her fellow artists. Claudia Di Francesco, for instance, immerses the viewer in a dreamlike world where figures emerge from shadowy depths, evoking both the mythical and the subconscious. Her works function as portals to a timeless space where past and present, reality and imagination, are in constant dialogue. The delicate yet unsettling nature of her imagery resonates with Gandini’s vision of transformation and liminality.

Similarly, Flaminia Veronesi’s paintings depict hybrid creatures that transcend conventional categories of human, animal, and divine. Her otherworldly compositions offer a vision of boundless possibility, where forms remain fluid and identities are ever-changing. This engagement with the fantastical aligns with Gandini’s interest in symbolic transformation, as both artists challenge fixed definitions and embrace the fluid nature of being.

Cleo Fariselli, on the other hand, brings a tactile, bodily dimension to the exhibition. Her ceramic sculptures, cast from fragments of her own body, highlight the materiality of transformation. The duality of fullness and emptiness, smoothness and roughness, external and internal, echoes Gandini’s engagement with the themes of presence and absence, wholeness and fragmentation. The organic quality of Fariselli’s work further reinforces the connection to natural cycles, much like Gandini’s invocation of water as a symbol of continuity and renewal.

By situating Gandini’s work within this broader artistic dialogue, Embryonic Journey emerges as a meditation on the transient yet enduring nature of human experience. The exhibition’s title suggests a process of becoming, an evolving state of transformation that echoes the themes explored by each artist. The journey is not only one of artistic exploration but also of self-reflection, as viewers are invited to contemplate their own relationship with memory, emotion, and change.

Ultimately, Embryonic Journey is more than an exhibition; it is an immersive, multi-sensory experience that invites viewers to navigate the liminal spaces between the known and the unknown, the tangible and the ephemeral. Gandini’s evocative sculptures and collages, alongside the visionary works of Di Francesco, Fariselli, and Veronesi, create a space where mythology, memory, and materiality converge. The exhibition ultimately serves as an invitation to reflect on the ephemeral and eternal forces that shape human experience, offering a poetic meditation on the cycles of life, art, and emotion.

The interplay of artistic media and conceptual depth ensures that the exhibition resonates on both an intellectual and visceral level, encouraging viewers to lose themselves in its intricate layers while forging personal connections to its themes.