My paintings are never planned. I never know how a story will end. I like to distort reality, to exaggerate it, to make it grotesque. For me, painting is one of the few moments of true freedom.Yann Leto
Extending Andrea Festa’s curatorial ethos, Sala Nova provides artists with a platform to move beyond the boundaries of their established practices, testing new mediums, formats, and conceptual approaches.
For its inaugural presentation, Yann Leto transforms Sala Nova into a stage where narratives unravel in unexpected ways. Known for his improvisational approach to painting and sculpture, Leto works against traditional methods: he begins with figures and foregrounds, allowing the surrounding context to emerge later, as though constructing a theater scene. This anti-classical process produces works charged with unpredictability, irony, and distortion.
The exhibition features a series of five paintings—including new works with acrylic sculptural interventions—and a central sculptural piece, all linked by a comic-strip sensibility. Characters shift roles: a broker becomes a boxer, a swimmer transforms into a pianist, reflecting Leto’s fascination with unstable identities and the mutability of social roles. His works borrow from classical masters such as Magritte, Botticelli, Géricault, Picasso, and Delacroix, while simultaneously pulling from the imagery of televised sports, social media, and fleeting everyday encounters.
Leto’s practice situates itself at the intersection of critique and play. He magnifies the absurdities of society through caricature and grotesque exaggeration, while also offering poetic glimpses of humanity in its contradictions, flaws, and virtues. As he describes, painting for him is a space of true freedom—where reality can be reimagined, distorted, and made unfamiliar.
With Yann Leto’s exhibition, Sala Nova affirms its mission as a site of artistic reinvention: a place for bold gestures, hybrid forms, and narratives that expand the gallery’s role within the cultural landscape.
