“Of Places and the Gaze” arises from the genuine encounter between two artistic personalities driven by the same urgency: to move through places in order to grasp their essence. Looking at a place is never a neutral act. It is an encounter. And, like all encounters, it leaves an indelible trace. This is how Marco Verdelli and Irene Das Neves engage in dialogue through their works, as both celebrate beloved places, reinterpreting them and preserving the vibrations they have felt. Painting and photography brush against one another and correspond in a silent tension, suspended between natural landscape, urban context, and visceral perception. Reality is translated into a sensory dimension: the scenes then cease to be mere backdrops. Places become emotional maps where signs, silences, and margins express the soul.
In Irene Das Neves’s photographic works, the sea and the dunes become the stage for rarefied moments: waves shattering in the wind, restless seagulls rising until they blur into one another. Solitary presences carve fleeting reflections among footprints, while an unexpected mirror opens up games of planes and duplications. These are images in which movement is never merely physical, but becomes a field of force and freedom. Alongside these visions are scenes of life immersed in the charm of street art, where the urban sign intertwines with everyday experience, making city space a witness to belonging and visual stratification. The instant, the unexpected, precarious balance, and the simplest gestures reveal an ironic and deeply human register that transforms an ordinary scene into a powerful narrative.
Marco Verdelli moves within a more intimate and visceral sphere. His creative horizon passes through layers of history, from the ancient architecture of the Sacro Monte di Varese to other evocative geographical contexts. Corners steeped in memory, reworked as inner presences rather than as views: here Verdelli’s painting appears as a direct, intimate, almost necessary act. Verdelli paints in the heart of the night, in a condition of recollection and concentration that has accompanied his work for many years. Only recently has he chosen to share this body of work, long kept as a personal diary. In his watercolours, glimpses, walls, and sacred paths emerge like evanescent apparitions, entrusted to an essential mark that retains the echo of time without ever yielding to description. Light does not define contours, but suggests them; lines do not impose themselves, but discreetly surface in a deep and silent perceptual texture.
The two-person exhibition by Marco Verdelli and Irene Das Neves reveals an affinity between two distinct yet profoundly connected languages that mirror one another: on one side the movement and energy of reality, on the other its slow interiorization.
Enhancing the event will be the presence of Samuele Corsalini (Varese, 1991), a well-known author and cultural communicator. Corsalini works on the promotion of the history and identity of the Varese area through editorial projects, public meetings, and outreach activities. He wrote the volume Quel che non sai di Varese, linked to the project of the same name launched in 2024, dedicated to discovering stories, curiosities, and lesser-known fragments of the city. Through his work, he promotes a participatory cultural narrative attentive to the relationship between community, territory, and identity. Joining him will also be Francesco Gemmo, storyteller, portrait artist, and digital creator active in the tourism sector. Since 2023 he has been creating content dedicated to Varese and its territory, combining photography and interpretation. Since 2025 he has been collaborating on the project Quel che non sai di Varese.
MARCO VERDELLI – Landscape as Inner Listening
Marco Verdelli was born in Varese in 1957. In the 1970s he attended the “Angelo Frattini” State Art High School in Varese, where he experimented with various painting techniques — oil, engraving, etching, woodcut, ink, pastel — until he identified watercolour as the medium most suited to his sensibility. During his training he was guided by the artists of the “Gruppo Montefeltro” (Cascioli, Cicoli, Galoppi, Paoli, Piersantini), developing a particular attention to colour, material, and formal balance. His bond with the Varese territory is the core of his research: hills, woods, lakes, natural and sacred landscapes become openings for listening and reconciliation with himself. Verdelli observes, internalizes, and returns sensations on paper rather than images. His painting is vital energy, in which every brushstroke retains an emotion.
IRENE DAS NEVES – Photography as Poetry of Memory
Born on March 15, 1956, in Setúbal, Portugal, Irene Das Neves has lived in Italy since 1979 and resides in Varese, where she deepened her training in applied aesthetics. Always drawn to the harmony of forms and to the details of living things, she found in photography the privileged language through which to express her poetics. When she photographs, Irene reveals her hidden soul: shadow becomes light, the instant expands into eternity. Her shots transform reality into visual poetry, allowing intimate perceptions and reflections of reminiscence to emerge. Photography thus becomes a tool of profound inquiry, capable of conveying atmospheres and states of mind with authenticity and intensity.
The exhibition is curated by Carla Pugliano, artist and founder of CathArt Gallery. Recently, Pugliano was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Triennale, exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale and the 14th Florence Biennale, and was honoured at the Chamber of Deputies. Since 2025 she has been Artistic Consultant for the Atlante dell’Arte Contemporanea published by Giunti, which will be presented at MoMA in New York.