Francesco Biondo in Palermo with Sulle tracce di Aladino
From 26 September to 2 October 2026, Francesco Biondo will be among the artists featured in “Artisti ’26 – Top Selection”, the exhibition dedicated to artists selected for the 2026 edition of the International Art Yearbook Artisti, at the Gallery in Via Ariosto 19, Palermo.
Sulle tracce di Aladino (On the Trail of Aladdin) is born from a material that seems to hold something that precedes painting. Against a dark background, a few essential forms emerge: a vertical presence, several light traces interrupting the surface, and a small isolated element. The composition does not explicitly tell a story, but rather preserves fragments of one, much as memory does when experience remains primarily as signs, details and partial presences.
The materials themselves carry a history. The work incorporates found fragments of wood, collected and subsequently inserted into the composition. Among them is an element still marked by traces of colour, taken from a fragment of a boat found on the beach. Its previous history is neither erased nor turned into a specific symbol: it enters the work as part of the layering of presences, traces and memories that characterises Biondo’s practice.
The trace is, in fact, one of the recurring elements in his research. Matter becomes a surface for memory, while the pictorial gesture does not simply seek to construct a form: it searches for it, interrupts it, allows it to emerge. In Sulle tracce di Aladino, the contrast between the dominant black and the parts left visible creates a suspended space in which the figure seems to take shape while simultaneously withdrawing from the gaze.
The title thus introduces the idea of a search that does not necessarily lead to a discovery. To follow a trace also means accepting that what is being sought may not reappear in its entirety. What may remain is a mark, a fragment, a material altered by time. Painting intervenes without completely erasing what it finds, allowing memory to continue to emerge through traces, details and omissions.
The exhibition is part of the Artisti ’26 project, the International Art Yearbook published by Mondadori Editions since 2019 and promoted by the Effetto Arte Foundation. The 2026 edition develops an international exhibition and communication programme, including the presentation of the Yearbook at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the artists’ participation in the ArteGenova and ArtePadova art fairs.
Top Selection is a special section reserved for artists who distinguished themselves in the 2024 and 2025 editions of the Yearbook. Among the initiatives included in the project, the Palermo exhibition provides an opportunity to present the selected artists’ works in a shared exhibition space, bringing together different languages and approaches within contemporary artistic research.
For Biondo, the exhibition also has the particular meaning of a return to Palermo, the city where he trained as an architect and where the relationship between space, matter and sign that continues to emerge in his artistic research first took shape.
The exhibition brings together 58 artists:
Bruno Arcangeli, Rita Astolfi, Patrizia Benedetti, Ermanno Berselli, Maria Grazia Bertucci, Daniela Biella, Francesco Biondo, Ardo Borsari, Ernesto Butticè, Claudia Caneschi, Milena Emma Caracciolo, Manuela Carnini, Mirco Colombo, Gentilia Conti, Stefania Corvino, Maria De Vito, Ercolina Delle Monache, Paola Di Biase, A. Djeraba Faè, Emma Fausti, Fabio Ferrari, Stefania Fois, Simone Francioli, Tania Frisani, Lena Gentile, Fulvio Giudice, Marco Grechi, Mariapace Gritti Morlacchi, Irene Guarino, Tiziana Guerra, Anna Hamar, Marina Lebro, Amalia Gioconda Losco, Annibale Mancinelli, Denise Mastel, Giusy Matranga, Pier Giorgio Mela, Mara Montagna, Francesco Montoneri, Giancarlo Narduzzi, Margarete Neves, Antonino Nicolini, Rosario Oliva, Katia Papaleo, Fabrizio Pinzi, Mario Raniolo, Dario Romano, Davide Romano, Ruggero Rotondi, Paola Salomè, Andrea Sanna, Matilde Santinato, Cinzia Serra, Lorenzo Trombino, Mario Angelo Vacca, Salvatore Antonio Vacca, Cristian Vitrano, Mario Zammit-Lewis.
ARTISTI ’26 – TOP SELECTION
Group exhibition
26 September – 2 October 2026
Gallery – Via Ariosto 19, 1st floor – Palermo
Opening: 26 September, 6:00 pm
Opening hours: Monday–Friday, 9:00 am–1:00 pm / 3:00 pm–5:00 pm.