Britain's What's On Event Guide
Paolo Battistutta — TRANSITS
Transits as passages, metamorphoses, transformations is the title of Paolo Battistutta’s exhibition at Cris Contini Contemporary gallery in Notting Hill , London, running from 14 October to 15 November 2025. The show encapsulates both our present and the essence of his practice, naming the constant shift between figuration - faces, portraits, human presence - and the abstract–informal field - the celebrated tondos and beyond. Timed with Frieze London, the exhibition enters the wider conversation animating the city’s contemporary art scene that week.
On large canvases, Battistutta stages a visceral confrontation with painting: matter and thought, gesture and figure push the image beyond its boundaries. Paint becomes psyche— emotion before figure — driven by an informal, impulsive energy. His monumental visages, cut through by vivid chromatic fields, open a journey into interiority: less “beautiful” portraits than raw mirrors of vulnerability, where deformation sharpens insight.
The other pole of his work unfolds in the tondos: dynamic, layered masses radiating a primordial energy—arenas of impulses, events and tensions—where the circular form offers unity alongside maximum compositional freedom. Here the ego recedes, form fractures, and an almost iconoclastic impulse advances; painting becomes a transit of body and soul.
The exhibition is organized by Cris Contini Contemporary, coordinated by Sandra Sanson and accompanied by a catalogue published by Grafiche Antiga, featuring critical texts by Lorena Gava, Pasquale Lettieri, Matteo Pellegrin, Cristian Contini, and Fulvio Granocchia.
Title: Paolo Battistutta — TRANSITS
Venue: Cris Contini Contemporary, 1 Lonsdale Road W11 2BY, Notting Hill, London
Dates: 14 October – 15 November 2025
Vernissage: 14 October 2025 at 6:00 PM
On large canvases, Battistutta stages a visceral confrontation with painting: matter and thought, gesture and figure push the image beyond its boundaries. Paint becomes psyche— emotion before figure — driven by an informal, impulsive energy. His monumental visages, cut through by vivid chromatic fields, open a journey into interiority: less “beautiful” portraits than raw mirrors of vulnerability, where deformation sharpens insight.
The other pole of his work unfolds in the tondos: dynamic, layered masses radiating a primordial energy—arenas of impulses, events and tensions—where the circular form offers unity alongside maximum compositional freedom. Here the ego recedes, form fractures, and an almost iconoclastic impulse advances; painting becomes a transit of body and soul.
The exhibition is organized by Cris Contini Contemporary, coordinated by Sandra Sanson and accompanied by a catalogue published by Grafiche Antiga, featuring critical texts by Lorena Gava, Pasquale Lettieri, Matteo Pellegrin, Cristian Contini, and Fulvio Granocchia.
Title: Paolo Battistutta — TRANSITS
Venue: Cris Contini Contemporary, 1 Lonsdale Road W11 2BY, Notting Hill, London
Dates: 14 October – 15 November 2025
Vernissage: 14 October 2025 at 6:00 PM
Tue 14 Oct to Sat 18 Oct, Tue 21 Oct to Sat 25 Oct, Tue 28 Oct to Sat 1 Nov, Tue 4 Nov to Sat 8 Nov, Tue 11 Nov to Sat 15 Nov
1 Lonsdale Road, Notting Hill, London W11 2BY
Dates: 14 October – 15 November 2025Tue - Sat 10.00AM - 6.00PM
Vernissage: 14 October 2025 at 6:00 PM
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