BOCCANERA  GALLERY

DRIFTERS (Valentina Miorandi+Sandrine Nicoletta) were born in London (UK) in 2014. They lives and work in London (UK).

DRIFTERS (Valentina Miorandi + Sandrine Nicoletta) is an art duo born with the interest in weaving directions, exploring places and people through a heuristic approach. Valentina Miorandi and Sandrine Nicoletta, whose background is based on public art and exhibition design, are interested in a curatorial approach within their artistic practice. Currently they are working on a long-term discursive research project that operates as umbrella to growing series of events, apparitions, trekkings, video and writing projects.

Valentina Miorandi was born in Trento (IT) in 1982.

Valentina Miorandi is a visual artist and exhibition designer.
She has a B.A. in Theory and Practice of Thea- tre, University of Bologna (2005). She has won two fellowships for attending the M.A. in Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy (2006), the M.A in Director of Photography at the Escuela Superior de Cine- ma y Audiovisuales de Catalunya (2007) and the M.F.A at DAI-Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem (NL). Since 2008 she has created numerous multi-media projects at various cultural institutions in Italy and abroad. Valentina’s participatory ongoing projects (Heuristi Records, Turning Tables, Bread) have involved communities in order to create new forms of art production based on the common good.

Sandrine Nicoletta was born in Aosta (IT) in 1970.
Sandrine Nicoletta is an artist and performer with a background in the social field. She has 20 years of experience in research and artistic practice in public places, as well as an international exhibition curriculum. She graduated from the Fine Arts Aca- demy of Bologna, participated in many artists-in-residence pro- grams and comple- ted her Master in Fine Arts at the University of the Arts, London (UK).

Nebojša Despotović was born in Belgrade (SRB) in 1982.
He lives and works in Berlin (D).

Nebojša Despotović thoroughly exploits the collective and personal iconograhic heritage recycling old photographs and images, newspapers, books, handbooks and magazines, which are the starting point for the artist to create his pantings. Despotović’s research, which pays particular attention to the definition and repre- sentation of the concept of identity, only apparently saves these images from the oblivion of time: covered and altered with painting they acquire an indefinite and outdated character which takes them back to a remote past.

In 2006 he achieved a bachelor degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice. In 2011 he won the residence at the prestigious Bevilacqua La Masa Italian Foundation and has been selected at the 54th Venice Biennial to represent the Italian Art Academies in the Arsenal section. He received many eulogies and prizes. In 2012 he won the Euromobil Under 30 Prize at Art Fair in Bologna and the Mango Young Artist Award of Swab in Barcelona Fair. In 2013 he won the Collectors for Celeste prize for the Raw Zone, experimental area of ArtVerona Fair. In 2015 he won the special Art Prize in Arte Fiera Bologna and in 2016 the Rotari Prize at ArtVerona. His expositions are countless in many public and private spaces. In February 2014 his second solo show “Silent Fracture” at Boccanera Gallery in Trento, curated by Maja Ćirić. In May 2014 the Capodimonte Museum of Naples hosted the talk with artist entitled “Still life of Nebojša Despotović” curated by Angela Tecce and Eugenio Viola. In 2015 Treviso Ricerca Arte foundation hosted the double solo show of Nebojša Despotović with Enzo Cucchi entitled “La pelle di Serpente”. Currently he exhibits in the group show This is Today (Piran Town Gallery, SLO) devoted to artists of the last decade of the Academy of Venice, in Rome by Monitor Gallery with Malutta Foundation. In May 2017 the first solo show in Mosca by Triangle Gallery and in September 2017 the first Solo Show in NYC by Ierimonti Gallery.

Z2O SARA ZANIN GALLERY

Alessandro Roma (Milan, Italy, 1977) works with several materials from drawing to installation and plays with the notions of perceiving what is undefined. His works are linked to the classic themes of landscape painting tradition, they explore their boundaries and shirk formal techniques in favor of an on-going melding between memory and imagination. Nature is interpreted as an enchanted place where unforeseeable metamorphoses take place, generated by the unpredictability of a “free” vision and at the same time by the attempt to fix them, through mastery, in new formal structures. Imagination plays a central role in the artist’s practice: both at the onset of the work production and in its fruition. 
These are instants of a fragmented space capable of recomposing itself – rather magically, in a dream-like unit within a resonating balance where the subconscious dimension emerges as a fundamental value.  His works leave enough room for viewers to constantly and newly re-interpret the image. His works tend to elicit a special kind of catharsis of the eye, by inviting the viewer to plunge into a personal labyrinth of memories, references and suggestions.

Paper, card and books have a fundamental value in the work of Ekaterina Panikanova (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1975), whose research is mainly centered around a deep “psychological” reflection on individuals, on archetypes and on memory. Everyday life is generally anchored in the past and thus both our present and our future are strongly bound to our past experience. Ekaterina Panikanova uses old books from different countries, she chooses the pages and reads the texts: the wear and tear, underlines, notes and scribbles, enable the artist to perceive the personalities of people who have read them. They also represent a body of rules, dogmas, traditions, religious beliefs and scientific discoveries which, right or wrong for their time, yet free human beings, and enclose them in a cage, simultaneously.
Bicycles, rocking horses, pies, animals are frequent symbols in her work and they are used to convey the idea of animal instinct, of the traditions and, in the case of fire, as a metaphor to symbolizing our ability to see, to warm ourselves and to invent but also as a symbol of dictatorship, censorship and obscuration.

Alessandro Roma (Milan, Italy, 1977) lives and works in Milan. Amongst his recent solo shows: Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix (London, forthcoming, 2017); Swamp (Museo di Villa Croce, Genova, 2016); One foot in the world and the other in the stillness (z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, 2016); Coburn project (London, 2015); Coburn Projects (London, 2015); Locus Amoenus (Sobering Gallery, Paris, 2014); Enclosure (Paradise Row Gallery, London, 2013); Humus (Mart Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rovereto, 2011); Sites of action (Scaramouche Gallery, New York, 2011). A selection of his group shows includes: La Pelle (Fondaco, Bruxelles, Belgium, 2016); Biennale del disegno Rimini (Rimini, 2016); Le stanze d’Aragona (Villino Favaloro and Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo, 2015); Drawing Biennial 2015 (Drawing Room, London); Drawing (z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, 2014); Everything is About to Happen (Corvi Mora, London, 2014); Lucie Fontaine: Estate (Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, 2012).

Ekaterina Panikanova (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1975) lives and works in Rome. Among her recent solo and group shows: Metamorphoses (Pornbach, 2016); Rimini Drawing Biennale (Rimini, 2016); Safari Moon (Galleria Visionnaire, Milan, 2015); Uomo e spiritualità (Gambolò, Italy, 2015); Crepuscoli (z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, 2014); Almost Human (Converge Gallery, USA, 2014); Edra (Russian Institute of Culture, Rome, 2014); Torta di Ciliegie Nere (MIC Museo Internazionale di Ceramica, Faenza, 2014); Parlons d’elle (Palazzo Farnese, Rome, 2013);  Bazaar (Barbarian Art Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland, 2013); Uno due tre fuoco (z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome, 2012); Russian archives, Barbarian Art Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland, 2012); 11 allunaggi possibili (Ca Zenobio, Venice, 2011); Concordances (Palazzo Farnese, Rome, 2012). Her works are featured in the most important collection in Italy and abroad and she participated in the most important international art fairs such as Art Miami, Art Context Miami and Pulse New York: In Europe she is represented by z2o Sara Zanin Gallery e in the United States she works with Converge Gallery.