Exhibitions: "Lo spazio ineffabile" and "Palloni gonfiati" by Gianni Cella


The City of Cannobio is pleased to announce its collaboration with Gianni Cella, a leading figure in contemporary Italian art.

The exhibition project—curated by Marianna Cappia and coordinated by Marco Albertella—aims to highlight Gianni Cella’s forty-year career. It begins with a widespread exhibition entitled Palloni gonfiati, featuring five works displayed in emblematic and poetic locations throughout the city, and continues with Lo spazio ineffabile, a retrospective solo exhibition held at Palazzo Parasi.

Palloni gonfiati

curated by Marianna Cappia
from Friday, March 27 to Sunday, October 25, 2026

The exhibition presents a series of large humanoid sculptures with deliberately oversized heads—an ironic, three-dimensional interpretation of a popular expression that the artist transforms into an image: the “inflated balloon.” Through vivid colours, soft volumes and an only apparent lightness, Gianni Cella reflects on the mechanisms of power and on figures who, in the contemporary world, allow themselves to be inflated by their role.

These works, already appreciated by the public during the exhibition of the same name held at the gardens of Novara railway station and later at Bocconi University, now return to the urban space to engage with the landscape and passers-by, inviting a direct, immediate and playful encounter with art. The exhibition aims to transform the city into a path of discovery, bringing visitors and residents closer to Gianni Cella’s visionary and irreverent poetics.

 

Lo spazio ineffabile

curated by Marianna Cappia

Opening: Saturday, May 9 2026
 

The exhibition offers the opportunity to retrace the artist’s evolution from the 1970s to the present day, revealing how his sensibility formed the original foundation of a language that would later characterize the Plumcake group. Moving beyond the well-known playful and colourful aesthetic associated with the 1980s, the exhibition seeks to overcome the traditional overlap between Cella and Plumcake, restoring the artist’s full autonomy.

His fibreglass works—immediate yet enigmatic—reveal a depth that challenges any single interpretation. Through historical works and more recent pieces, the exhibition reconstructs how Gianni Cella has brought delicacy, design awareness and emotional depth into a playful and popular imagery, making his work an original and personal expression of the contemporary.

The exhibition will be open to the public on the first floor of Palazzo Parasi at the following times, until Sunday, July 19, 2026:


Thursday: 10:00–13:00
Friday: 15:00–18:30
Saturday: 10:00–13:00 and 15:00–18:30
Sunday: 10:00–13:00