Ondo presents for the kingdom, if I can, the first solo exhibition by Stefano De Paolis in Tuscany. The show marks the third installment of Ondo’s exhibition program, a project space dedicated to emerging artists with a particular focus on the Italian art scene. As a moment of reflection on De Paolis’s research path, the show includes a body of new works and a single drawing on paper, a medium that has long characterised the artist’s practice. The exhibition will be on view at Ondo from May 31 to September 5, 2025.
At the heart of the show, the drawing Per il regno (2025) dialogues with five black-and-white analog photographs that capture talismanic objects, furnishings, and symbols belonging to a deeply intimate and personal imaginary — at times the artist’s visual universe, at others a scenography inhabited by a recurring protagonist figure.
The works transport viewers into a suspended dimension, difficult to locate in time, where references to pop culture, music, cinema, and art history intertwine. Drawing is the medium that has always distinguished De Paolis’s production: its delicacy and the constraints of graphite and silverpoint as techniques become a mirror of the artist’s stubborn tenacity, with which he undertakes heroic feats that are only seemingly impossible. Photography, a medium explored more recently, helps consolidate a visual world that seems to orbit a hidden narrative: it crystallises fragments of a domestic epic, transforming everyday objects into symbolic presences, frozen in time. These still lifes catalog elements designed or customized by the central figure: L’Orologio a Pendolo (The Pendulum Clock), l’Armadio (The Wardrobe), Il Servizio da tè (The Tea Set), Il Telefono, (The Telephone), La Sedia Thonet (the Thonet Chair).
Completing the exhibition is a contribution to the Ondo Agenda, the editorial space where the artist appears in the form of a “phantom presence,” noting reflections on the works that have shaped his imaginative universe so far. Here, De Paolis meticulously recounts the stories behind the subjects of his photographs, reflecting on his practice through notes that read like distant memories. This exercise in self-analysis finds its synthesis in Per il regno, where a young man — familiar to those who have seen other portraits by the artist — leafs through a memory album, suspended between lived and imagined exploits. Alongside him, we viewers too remain suspended—between the memory of a legendary past and the anticipation of a future yet to be written.
Ondo presents for the kingdom, if I can, the first solo exhibition by Stefano De Paolis in Tuscany. The show marks the third installment of Ondo’s exhibition program, a project space dedicated to emerging artists with a particular focus on the Italian art scene. As a moment of reflection on De Paolis’s research path, the show includes a body of new works and a single drawing on paper, a medium that has long characterised the artist’s practice. The exhibition will be on view at Ondo from May 31 to September 5, 2025.
At the heart of the show, the drawing Per il regno (2025) dialogues with five black-and-white analog photographs that capture talismanic objects, furnishings, and symbols belonging to a deeply intimate and personal imaginary — at times the artist’s visual universe, at others a scenography inhabited by a recurring protagonist figure.
The works transport viewers into a suspended dimension, difficult to locate in time, where references to pop culture, music, cinema, and art history intertwine. Drawing is the medium that has always distinguished De Paolis’s production: its delicacy and the constraints of graphite and silverpoint as techniques become a mirror of the artist’s stubborn tenacity, with which he undertakes heroic feats that are only seemingly impossible. Photography, a medium explored more recently, helps consolidate a visual world that seems to orbit a hidden narrative: it crystallises fragments of a domestic epic, transforming everyday objects into symbolic presences, frozen in time. These still lifes catalog elements designed or customized by the central figure: L’Orologio a Pendolo (The Pendulum Clock), l’Armadio (The Wardrobe), Il Servizio da tè (The Tea Set), Il Telefono, (The Telephone), La Sedia Thonet (the Thonet Chair).
Completing the exhibition is a contribution to the Ondo Agenda, the editorial space where the artist appears in the form of a “phantom presence,” noting reflections on the works that have shaped his imaginative universe so far. Here, De Paolis meticulously recounts the stories behind the subjects of his photographs, reflecting on his practice through notes that read like distant memories. This exercise in self-analysis finds its synthesis in Per il regno, where a young man — familiar to those who have seen other portraits by the artist — leafs through a memory album, suspended between lived and imagined exploits. Alongside him, we viewers too remain suspended—between the memory of a legendary past and the anticipation of a future yet to be written.