I NEED SILENCE

Andrea Festa gallery is pleased to present I NEED SILENCE in Sala Nova, a group exhibition bringing  together four emerging artists — Miriam Auteri, Gao Xintong, Nikko Mundacruz, and  Shuang Jiang — whose practices explore the threshold between figuration  and abstraction, where perception slows and meaning unfolds through ambiguity.  

The exhibition will open on 25th March, 2026 from 6–9 pm and will remain on view until the  10th of May, 2026  

Silence, in this context, is not the absence of sound but a condition of attention. It is a  space where images resist immediate readability and instead demand duration, proximity,  and a heightened sensitivity to surface. The works presented in I NEED SILENCE share a  common approach: they do not seek to describe reality, but to suspend it — holding the  viewer in a moment where recognition and abstraction coexist.  

Across painting, each artist constructs a visual language that operates through reduction,  tension, and transformation. Forms emerge from close observation — of the body, of  nature, of internal states — only to be progressively destabilised. What begins as something  identifiable dissolves into folds, volumes, and chromatic intensities that refuse fixed  interpretation.  

Miriam Auteri’s practice centers on the surface as a site of encounter between vision and  matter. Her paintings originate from fragments — vegetal structures, bodily traces — that  are condensed into ambiguous forms, oscillating between organic presence and  abstraction. The image becomes a threshold, where the body is both revealed and  withheld, never fully accessible.  

In Gao Xintong’s work, abstraction unfolds as a dynamic system of energy. Drawing from  both prehistoric visual languages and Futurist notions of movement, the paintings construct  fluid environments where human, botanical, and cosmic elements converge. Through  layered lines and saturated color, the works suggest a continuous transformation — a flow  in which identity dissolves into a broader, collective rhythm.  

Nikko Mundacruz approaches painting through the lens of psychological and social  experience. His compositions focus on micro-gestures, postures, and moments of quiet  introspection, often capturing the subtle tension of human interaction. These images evoke  the suspended state that follows intensity — a silence where emotional and mental  energies begin to recalibrate and regenerate.  

Shuang Jiang’s practice reflects on the interconnectedness of all forms of life. Through  sharp lines and fluid structures, her works trace a constant oscillation between fragility and  resilience, conflict and harmony. Abstract forms become carriers of a universal energy,  suggesting a cosmos in perpetual transformation, where nothing exists in isolation but is  continuously reshaped through relation.  

What unites these practices is a shared resistance to immediacy. Rather than offering  images to be consumed, the artists construct spaces of delay — where meaning is not  given, but emerges slowly through sustained looking. In this sense, silence becomes an  active force: a condition that allows the image to unfold beyond representation, into  something more tactile, more intimate, and ultimately more uncertain.