Sala Nova: THE CAT IS UNDER THE TABLE by Carlotta Mazzariol at Andrea Festa installation shot
The Cat is Under the Table
Carlotta Mazzariol
Carlotta Mazzariol
Andrea Festa is pleased to present The Cat is Under the Table in Sala Nova, a solo exhibition by Carlotta Mazzariol. The opening ceremony is held on the 4th of February from 6 pm to 9 pm, and the exhibition is on view until March 19th, 2026.
Mazzariol’s presentation in Sala Nova moves through the threshold between the familiar and the elusive—those moments in which a scene appears instantly recognizable, yet resists a stable definition. Rooted in an intimate, everyday iconography—gardens, courtyards, terraces—the works stage a suspended narrative: something has just happened, is about to happen, or has already slipped away.
The artist’s paintings originate from a constellation of images—personal photographic archives, lived and remembered spaces, fragments found online, and invention. Across the surface, a “patch” (macchia) painting method—at once free and carefully governed—creates a permeability between figures, objects, and atmosphere, where definition and chance coexist. Presence is repeatedly deferred: figures seem elsewhere, identities hover, and the compositions hold a quiet tension, as if the image were still forming.
In The cat is under the table (2025), a garden table is set for a convivial gathering, yet no one appears. What remains are objects—traces of sociality—while a cat, hidden beneath the table, fixes its gaze toward the viewer: a discreet witness within the scene and, subtly, the scene’s destabilizing and capturing center.
Throughout the exhibition, domestic and outdoor spaces become stages for a psychology of attention—quiet, precise, and slightly unsettled. The works invite a slow looking: to read the residue of gestures, to sense the drift of time, and to notice what is present only indirectly—like the cat under the table, watching.
Carlotta Mazzariol (b. 2001, Montebelluna) is an Italian painter working between Nervesa della Battaglia and Venice. Her practice centers on painting, building images from personal photographs, remembered places, and invented scenes through a patch-based method that blends figures, objects, and atmosphere. She focuses on domestic and outdoor settings where narrative remains suspended and subtly unstable. She was awarded a studio at Emeroteca dell’Arte with the Civic Museums of Venice and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, and has exhibited in Chiamata alle Arti in Rome and New York.
Andrea Festa
The Cat is Under the Table
Carlotta Mazzariol
The Cat is Under the Table
Carlotta Mazzariol
4 February – 19 March 2026
andreafestafineart@gmail.com
andreafestafineart@gmail.com
