Milano Drawing Week

Digging into the crevices of everyday experience and inspired by chance encounters with common objects, the works of Serena Vestrucci (b. Milan, 1986) interrogate and transform the ordinary through a diverse range of artistic processes and linguistic paradoxes. Fascinated by artefacts, situations, images, and materials picked out from everyday life (such as flags, pastels, fried squid, seasonal fruit), the artist turns these elements into the subject and raw material of her artistic experience. By modifying them and shifting them into fields of action different from their original context, Vestrucci draws attention to them, changing their appearance and filling them with new meanings, in an instantaneous and illusory poetics, barely visible and yet only apparently simple.
The outcome are works that, in their visual immediacy, subvert the perception of the work of art, changing its semantic value and inviting the viewer to rethink the way they observe and interpret their surroundings. Imbued with a subtle irony towards contemporaneity, Vestrucci’s works probe the obviousness of small things, giving back voice to what is often hidden, forgotten, or cast aside. Through a playful, yet blunt and provocative language, the artist elevates ambiguity to a necessary foundation for a more accurate understanding of reality.
After obtaining a BA from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Vestrucci moved to Venice, where in 2011 was awarded a residency at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation’s ateliers, and in 2013 obtained an MA in Design and Production of the Visual Arts at the IUAV University of Venice.

Selected solo exhibitions include Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021); FuoriCampo Gallery, Siena (2018); Gallery of Modern Art, Verona (2017); Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas, Palermo (2017); Marsèlleria Permanent Exhibition, Milan (2016); Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2015); and Otto Zoo Gallery, Milan (2013).

Her work has been featured in group shows at Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw (2022); Made in Cloister Foundation, Naples (2022); Imago Mundi Foundation, Treviso (2021); Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome (2020); Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2020 and 2015); Palazzo Del Medico, Carrara (2020); Michetti Foundation Museum, Francavilla al Mare, Chieti (2020); Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (2019); Blitz, Valletta, Republic of Malta (2019); Italian Cultural Institute, New York (2018); Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018); Santa Maria della Scala Museum, Siena (2018); Palazzo Reale, Milan (2017 and 2015); Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice (2017, 2012 and 2010); FRISE Künstlerhaus, Hamburg, (2014); Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno (2014); Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin (2014); GAM Gallery of Modern Art, Milan (2012); Venetian Institute of Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Venice (2012); and Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands (2011).

In 2017 she was awarded the 18th edition of Premio Cairo, and she was selected by the City of Milan to conceive and realise a permanent artwork in the frame of the ArtLine Milano public art commission.