PARIS.- GALLERIA CONTINUA is presenting Blursday, the new solo exhibition by the artist duo Ornaghi & Prestinari, in its Paris exhibition space in the heart of the Marais.
The title of the exhibition refers to the English neologism Blursday, coined to describe the temporal and emotional disorientation experienced during the lockdowns imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, when the days of the week seemed to blur into a single indistinct sequence. For Ornaghi & Prestinari, the term becomes a metaphor for an abstract condition in which time loses its linearity, and the boundaries between yesterday, today, and tomorrow dissolve, giving rise to a blurred and undefined emotional state. Decontextualized here, the term outlines the suspended atmosphere and sense of displacement that permeate the exhibition. Valentina Ornaghi and Claudio Prestinari began working together in 2009, driven by the desire to develop each project through dialogue and collaboration. The multidisciplinary approach they refined during their education, combined with their interest in design, architecture, and art history, has become an integral part of their research. The work of Ornaghi & Prestinari explores the domestic, fragile, and intimate dimension of objects. Their practice moves between concept and action, with particular attention to materials and their manipulation. Delicacy, care, lightness, and irony are recurring themes in their works.
The exhibition is structured in the space through works that evoke a state of uncertainty. In the Sbilenco series, the canvases are misaligned from their frames, destabilizing the precision of the geometric pattern through the imperfection of the diagonal arrangement. This principle recurs throughout the exhibition, with works featuring distorted proportions, irregular shapes, or centerless compositions, subverting the Cartesian structure of the frame, with rules that are systematically contradicted.
The same idea of extending the work beyond the visual space of the canvas, playing with combinations of fullness and emptiness, also emerges in the triptych Non c’entra niente (Nothing to do with it), where the white space between the three canvases suggests a continuous and potentially infinite design. The rhythmic sequence of arrows, leaning against each other like dominoes, alludes to the temporality inherent to the idea of blursday, where the boundaries of the days dissolve and waver. Through these compositional devices, the artists propose a broader reflection on art itself, conceived not as a vehicle for definitive answers but as a space to pose open questions, stimulate diverse perspectives, and trace new trajectories.
Ornaghi & Prestinari focus on those everyday things that, thanks to the emotional value attributed to them, transcend their nature as mere objects. This concept is fully expressed in Vespertino, a sculpture combining a piece of furniture made by reusing wood from a 1960s piece, a small beam, a vase, and a golden, withered olive branch. The leaves that have fallen from the branch are transformed into inlays on the wooden shelf below, while some also appear in the drawer, alluding to the ability of things to preserve and evoke memories and emotions.
The overall sense of disorientation evoked by the artworks is heightened by the pages of newspapers scattered chaotically around them. This visual landscape suggests the idea of a fragmented and confused chronicle, referencing the frenetic scrolling movement on smartphones, where news mixes into an indistinct and continuous flow. The chaotic arrangement of the pages also recalls a famous scene from Nanni Moretti’s film Aprile, in which the protagonist, after the birth of his child, throws into the air articles accumulated over more than twenty years, overturning the preexisting order to make room for a new vision of life, completely transformed by the experience of parenthood.
Through a visual language imbued with irony and delicate tones, the contrast between heterogeneous materials makes a form of emotional tension tangible. Ornaghi & Prestinari thus explore the fragility and strength of bonds, revealing how their intrinsic instability paradoxically generates a form of mysterious balance.
Valentina Ornaghi and Claudio Prestinari were born in 1986 and 1984, respectively, in Milan, where they live and work. Since forming their artistic duo in 2009, Ornaghi earned a degree in Industrial Design, and Prestinari in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano, later continuing their studies at IUAV University of Venice.
In 2014, they held their first solo exhibition, Familiare, at GALLERIA CONTINUA in San Gimignano. In 2016, their work was showcased at New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli- Marimò, inaugurating a series of exhibitions dedicated to contemporary Italian art promoted by Magazzino Italian Art. In 2017, they created the public sculpture Filemone e Bauci for the new ArtLine park in CityLife, Milan, and exhibited the solo project Grigio Lieve at Casa Morandi/MAMbo in Bologna. That same year, they won a residency at the Carlo Zauli Museum, culminating in a final exhibition at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza.
In 2018, GALLERIA CONTINUA dedicated two additional solo exhibitions to them at its San Gimignano and Les Moulins locations. That year, they won the Club GAMeC Prize, and their work entered the collection of the GAMeC Museum in Bergamo. Their solo show Toccante took place in 2021 at GALLERIA CONTINUA’s space within The St. Regis Rome.
In 2022, one of their works was acquired by the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, and they participated in the Porcelain Biennale in Jingdezhen, China. That same year, they won the New York City Percent for Art program competition to create a series of public sculptures titled Costume at Bush Terminal, Brooklyn, in 2023.
Among numerous group exhibitions, highlights include shows at Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); Le Centquatre, Paris (2015); Museo Pietro Canonica at Villa Borghese, Rome; Arte Continua, Havana (2016); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (2016); MAAT, Lisbon (2018); MIDeC International Museum of Ceramic Design, Cerro di Laveno Mombello (2018); Kasteel van Gaasbeek, Brussels (2019); Rocca di Angera, Angera (2020); Fondation d’Entreprise Martell, Cognac (2020); Ceramic Art Avenue Art Museum, Jingdezhen (2022); Fondation Villa Datris, Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (2022); GAMeC, Bergamo (2022); Kunsthalle Bern, Bern (2023); Misk Art Institute, Riyadh (2023); Musée Picasso, Paris (2023); and Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2024). Ornaghi & Prestinari are co-founders of the T.NUA collective, alongside Tao Kulczycki and advisor Lindsay Aveilhé. T.NUA is an experimental initiative that conducts international hybrid projects at the intersection of art, community engagement, and education.
