For Flashback 2026, NP ArtLab presents an exhibition project that brings into dialogue a selection of works by the young artist Leonardo Dalla Torre with a core group of historic and contemporary works.
Precisely through this juxtaposition of different eras, the proposal aims to pair Dalla Torre’s paintings with historic works in specific visual focus points—such as a portrait by Massimo Campigli alongside one by Lara Favaretto. This pairing seeks to trigger a mirroring reflection, demonstrating how art has always developed through layers and retrospective gazes. Looking back, betraying the source to reclaim it, is not a nostalgic exercise, but an active and necessary practice to reinvent, interpret, and give form to the contemporary vision. The exhibition route will also be enriched by significant historical testimonies that complement its aesthetic and tactile power, as seen in Umberto Mastroianni's masterpiece Nero sopra giallo, a tribute to the CoBrA group by Gallizio, and others.
Leonardo Dalla Torre (Venice, 1995) develops a pictorial practice centered on figuration and portraiture, understood not as simple reproductions of reality, but as territories of psychological and existential inquiry. His subjects draw simultaneously from the iconography of Art History and from stimuli deeply rooted in contemporaneity. By dismantling chronological and contextual distances, the painter unifies the expressive traits of the body and flesh, exposing their "symptoms" and vulnerabilities. His painting is dense, evoking the imminence of a latent calamity and suspending the image in a state of perpetual deflagration. This temporal short-circuit is directly reflected in his choice of sources: Dalla Torre’s works often originate from isolating monumental details extracted from Old Masters—such as Leonardo da Vinci or Guido Reni—which are then brought into reaction with literary suggestions and contemporary news. An example of this is the subterranean dialogue with pivotal texts such as José Saramago’s Blindness, from which the artist borrows the idea of an exposed humanity, struck by a sudden alteration that shatters its certainties.
The final selection of works and historical artists included in the project will be finalized as the work progresses, guided by the conceptual coherence of the exhibition narrative and the rigorous aesthetic harmony of the booth.
29 October - 1 November
Flashback 2026 - Corso Giovanni Lanza 75, Turin
2nd floor
Booth 42