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Founded in 1990 by Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo, Galleria Continua was created "to give continuity to contemporary art in a landscape rich with the signs of ancient art", as the gallery mentions. Housed in a former cinema in the historic town of San Gimignano, Italy, the gallery has flourished in this unexpected yet timeless and majestic setting, now expanding worldwide with a presence in Beijing, Les Moulins, La Habana and more.
The art gallery's booth at the ongoing India Art Fair, taking place from February 6 – 9, 2025, at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds in Okhla, Delhi, brings together major contemporary artworks by Ai Weiwei, Loris Cecchini, Nikhil Chopra, Osvaldo González, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Anish Kapoor, Julio Le Parc, Jorge Macchi and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Renowned contemporary artist Ai Weiwei's "activity as a dissident has gone hand in hand with his artistic career and he has continued to produce work testifying to his political beliefs while at the same time making plenty of room for creativity and experimentation," as Galleria Continua puts it. At the art fair, his unique artwork Surfing (After Hokusai), 2024, a composition made of toy bricks (LEGO) is presented along with Iron Root, 2015 and Pottery with Glaze, 2024 (Neolithic Age vase from Yangshao Culture (5000–3000 B.C.E.), newly applied with glaze).
Best known for his site-specific, contemporary sculptures that merge nature, science and art in rhythmic abstraction, Italian artist Loris Cecchini, according to the gallery, "has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 56th, 51st and 49th Venice Biennale, the 6th and the 9th Shanghai Biennale, the 15th and 13th Rome Quadrennial, the Taiwan Biennale in Taipei", and more. At the India Art Fair 2025, his contemporary art piece Aeolian landforms (Etep), 2024, in cast polyester resin, acrylic resin and nylon fibre is presented.
Nikhil Chopra's artistic practice blends live art, drawing, photography, sculpture and installations. His largely improvised performances explore themes of identity, autobiography, authorship and self-portraiture. His work reflects on transformation, emphasising the role of time and duration in performance. Here, he presents War and Peace 1, 2024 (charcoal and pastel on paper); Love Letter, 2023 (dry pastel and charcoal on fabric); and Remembering Being There: Untitled, 2021 (charcoal and pastel on paper).
Cuban visual artist Osvaldo González’s Valencia, 2023, conceived in adhesive tape, plexiglas, LED light and resin is also part of the group show at the fair. "His work is distinguished by representing interior spaces with which he establishes some affective relationship or personal history. He is interested in the expressive capacities that at a visual and sensitive level can be achieved with a trash material such as adhesive tape and the desire to build new situations and experiences from the intervention of physical spaces," Continua notes.
Indian artist Shilpa Gupta showcases 12 digital photographs printed on photo rag paper as Untitled, Smoke, 2016. Her larger work, part of the collection of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, Mori Museum, M+ Museum, Louisiana Museum and more, "engages with the defining power of social and psychological borders on public life" and "[jolts] their viewers out of a complacent, assumed, objective distance from the theatre of politics, to show that we are all complicit in the mechanisms of large apparatuses of power", mentions Continua.
Subodh Gupta, one of India's most prolific artists, is known for his diverse use of sculpture, painting, installations, photography, video and performance. Though his work spans many mediums, it is perhaps best to define him as a sculptor, who presents Inner Garden XI, 2024, in cast bronze, brass and stainless steel at the art fair. "My new paintings and sculptures are about a spiritual process that helps me develop a closeness with nature. My career-long practice incorporates everyday objects that are ubiquitous throughout India, such as steel tiffin lunch boxes, thali pans, bicycles and milk pails. From such ordinary items, I explore how these objects can transform spaces of silence, minimalism, shape and line, form, visual aesthetics and structure, revealing the inner qualities of these natural elements and conveying emotions through their arrangement," he shares.
Anish Kapoor, represented by Galleria Continua since 2003, brings Untitled, 2020, in alabaster, and Pagan Gold to Lime Green, 2016, made of stainless steel and lacquer, to the India Art Fair this year. "For the entire length of [their] career, this contemporary artist has been fascinated with the notions of shape and void, perspective, light and the absence thereof. Kapoor, who works across numerous scales with diverse materials such as mirror, stone, wax or PVC, relentlessly explores geometric and biomorphic shapes while demonstrating a singular interest in negative space," the gallery describes. "That's what I am interested in: the void, the moment when this is not a hole, it is a space full of what isn't there," Kapoor notes about his presented piece.
Sphère Orange, 2023, by Julio Le Parc, glistens in yellow within the gallery's showcase at the ongoing art event. "He has long been concerned with how art might consider the participation of the public, and his research into perceptual instability as a pioneer of kinetic and op art led to important works involving light and movement. Le Parc is particularly interested in opening up new relationships between the art object and the viewer, whereby the visitor is no longer a passive, dependent observer, but an active participant within a dynamic experience," says Continua.
Artist Jorge Macchi often draws on newspapers, merging factual archives with anecdotes, chance and everyday life. Through a process of 'de-familiarisation,' he subtly deconstructs and reconfigures signs. Macchi's work frequently incorporates elements of music, literature and architecture, using maps, sheet music and cityscapes in unconventional ways. At Continua's showcase, his artwork titled False Ceiling, 2016, accompanies another painting, Foot, 2016, both oil on canvas.
Gates of Paradise 001, Adam and Eve, 2016, and Cinema Teatro Nuovo, San Gimignano, 2014 (both in gelatin-silver print) by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto tie up the showcase in their assuredness. As Continua puts it, "Grouped in thematic cycles that develop over a long period, Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs are an instrument of investigation into the photographic medium itself, through which to hide or reveal the thin line that separates reality from appearance. His research presents itself as a reflection on time, which passes through both the working procedure and the choice of subjects, crystallised in an instant and made eternal by the artist's shot with an almost visionary intuition."
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