Gabriele Biondi (b. 1995, Italy) is a visual artist who lives and works in Milan. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and Iuav University of Venice. He has taken part in group exhibitions and events including Osservatoriomaree (2025); Meeting Gardens Festival / Ife Collective (2023-2024); Contemporanea Prize (2023); Altamira (2024); Prisma Art Prize (2024); Premio Cramum (2022); and Ladispolaneamente Festival (2022).
Painting is an expressive necessity for Gabriele Biondi. Although his work remains closely connected to the landscape and the natural environment, it is not visually bound to figuration. The artist describes his painting as process-based: the metamorphosis and transformation of natural elements are re-examined through the act of painting to explore the distance between humankind and nature.
This narrative is not intended as a form of dystopian criticism, but rather as a vision - a perspective on the present we experience every day in an age of climate change. For this reason, colour is always particularly powerful in Gabriele Biondi’s paintings: atmospheric hues seem to belong to another world and foreshadow an impending transformation. The humanoid figures inhabiting these rarefied landscapes are based on small clay models created and photographed by the artist. They possess a distinctive physiognomy, with pronounced features and elongated noses, and may appear endearing or resemble aliens from another planet.
In the series of paintings presented at ReA Fair, Gabriele Biondi focuses on the figure of the angel, interpreting it in an unconventional way. Its traditional iconography is completely overturned and associated instead with an imagery of failure and falling. The artist calls it the Angelo aquilone (Kite Angel), evoking both the difficulty of flight and the repeated failures inherent in flying a kite. The Angelo aquilone therefore plummets towards us and is depicted upside down, reflecting a present marked by falls and uncertain flights like those of kites – steerable and always eager to try again.
The small painting Angelo della discarica (Landfill Angel) depicts the angel in its final act: disorientated, within a space that appears engulfed in flames, it confronts a landscape scarred by destruction. The work makes visible the violence inflicted upon the environment and invites us to reflect on our own role and responsibility in the face of such abuse.
This intermediary figure, suspended between the secular and the sacred, emphasises failure as an opportunity to open a discussion about the complexity of our fragmented and chaotic present, mirrored by the landscape it inhabits.
Text by Milena Zanetti