What we hold, what we lose

What we hold, what we lose, a solo exhibition by Ismaele Nones (Trento, 1992), brings together a selection of works created between 2023 and 2026, including Verso l'Alto verso la Terra: Sguardo al Firmamento (Upwards towards the Earth: Gazing at the Firmament), the large mosaic exhibited in Ravenna during the 9th Biennial of Mosaic, accompanied by paintings on canvas and wood. Since his debut, Ismaele Nones' artistic research has developed in a borderline territory, where art history becomes living material and an operational tool for questioning the present. His references range from ancient art – in particular 4th Century Byzantine art – to the elaborate languages of the Arte Povera masters, and to some exponents of contemporary British Pop Art. The exhibition project recreates a suspended temporal dimension, in which past and present coexist without hierarchy, giving shape to a layered and deeply contemporary narrative. Nones' works are set in ambiguous spaces, undefined architectures and unstable perspectives, which take the form of mental rather than real places. In this syncretic universe, religious symbols and canonical iconography are transfigured and recoded, not in a nostalgic key, but as active images capable of generating new levels of interpretation while maintaining their cultural depth intact.