1907
1962
two eras one dialogue
Curated by Ilaria Caravaglio
May 10 – 29, 2026
Orizzonti Arte Contemporanea
Piazzetta Cattedrale, Historic Center, Ostuni
A year after its first public preview at the MIA Photo Fair in Milan, the project PACANOWSKA / PACANOWSKI 1907–1962 – two eras one dialogue now finds its full exhibition form in the project room of Orizzonti Arte Contemporanea, inaugurating the 2026 season in line with a tradition that, in recent years, has established this space as a privileged site for research and experimentation.
The exhibition opens the fourth season of the space dedicated to artistic inquiry and builds upon the reflections of previous years, positioning itself within a well-defined trajectory—as a moment of traversal not only of place and material, but of time itself, understood as a fluid, porous dimension, continuously rewritten.
The work emerges not merely as a declaration of continuity between past and present art, but as a thoughtful and extended dialogue, for which the project room becomes a space of intimate contemplation, where the exchange between Andrea Pacanowski and Felicia Pacanowska unfolds in all its complexity.
The works on display result from the juxtaposition of painting, drawing, and engraving—artistic media employed by Felicia in the heart of the 20th century—and photography, the medium of her nephew Andrea, well known on the international contemporary scene for images with a strongly painterly quality.
At the core of the research lies a tension that was already evident: a dialogue that is never merely genealogical, but deeply rooted in language. The family bond becomes a critical device, an opportunity to question the very nature of the image and its ability to traverse eras and expressive codes. Felicia Pacanowska’s stylistic signature, grounded in the atmosphere of the École de Paris, meets her nephew’s contemporary photographic gaze in a hybrid territory where disciplinary boundaries dissolve.
This is not, however, a nostalgic operation nor an exercise in quotation. Pacanowski engages with his aunt’s works as living material, reactivating their latent potential through a process that is both interpretative and transformative. Photography thus becomes a means of passage: it does not document but redefines, does not reproduce but generates.
The images are constructed through overlaps, shifts, and respectful grafts, entering “on tiptoe” into the space—and history—of the older works. In pieces that engage with figuration, the body integrates into the pictorial space without visible rupture, as if it had always belonged to that image. In reworkings of abstraction, the gesture becomes freer, almost dissolved, and photography sheds any residual referentiality, approaching a purely perceptual dimension.
It is in this continuous oscillation between the recognizable and the undefined that the project finds its strength: a metamorphosis of the image that is never final, but always in progress—where time is no longer a line, but a surface upon which images settle, fade, and re-emerge.
The debut of the project in such an intimate exhibition space marks a fundamental step in its development, finding in the project room a dimension more aligned with its introspective and layered nature. The display does not amplify, but concentrates; it does not dramatize, but invites a close, almost meditative viewing.
PACANOWSKA / PACANOWSKI thus takes shape as a device of active memory, in which artistic heritage is not simply preserved, but continuously rewritten. It is a work that questions the very possibility of dialogue between eras, demonstrating how the image, when freed from a linear reading, can become a place of encounter and transformation.
With this season opening, the project room once again confirms itself as a threshold space: a place where art does not merely present itself, but reveals its becoming and its ongoing redefinition, between past and present.
Biography
Andrea Pacanowski was born in Rome in 1962 into a family with a strong artistic sensibility: his father was an architect, his aunt a painter of the École de Paris, and his grandmother a sculptor. Building on these solid foundations, Andrea developed his own artistic training: after graduating from an art high school, he began working in the studio of Alberta Tiburzi, a renowned Italian photographer of international fame. For over twenty years, Pacanowski devoted himself to fashion photography, developing his creative language and working both in Italy and abroad, mainly in Canada and the United States, with editorial collaborations, publications, and advertising campaigns.
In 2008, the need to fully dedicate himself to art became imperative, marking the beginning of a path of continuous experimentation and technical research. This led him to develop a fusion of photography and painting, creating a dialogue between the virtual and the real that takes shape in unique, three-dimensional works, where photographic language is pushed to the point of evoking painting.
Pacanowski employs a highly unusual technique, producing photographs without any post-production. From this choice emerge innovative visual solutions in which the image transforms into a painting. This already complex and layered technique has been extended into audiovisual form, integrating movement, dynamism, and sound, as in the video installation Acquario, where the exploration of light, the composition of forms, and the use of color revisit his artistic experience in photography.
Andrea Pacanowski made his artistic debut in Paris in 2008 and has since taken part in numerous group exhibitions and international art fairs in New York, Miami, Singapore, Istanbul, Milan, Bologna, and Rome.
In the Italian capital, in March 2012, he held his first solo exhibition, All’infuori di me, at the Museum of Rome in Trastevere, receiving great acclaim from both the public and critics. The exhibition was later hosted in Naples, Brindisi, Sicily, and Spoleto.
Andrea Pacanowski currently lives and works in Rome.
GALLERIA ORIZZONTI ARTE CONTEMPORANEA
Piazzetta Cattedrale (old town) – 72017 Ostuni (BR)
Tel. 0831.335373 – Cell. 348.8032506
info@orizzontiarte.it – www.orizzontiarte.it