Ornaghi & Prestinari's 'Blursday' at Continua evokes a state of uncertainty via art

The title of one of Galleria Continua's ongoing shows, Blursday, is a nod to the English neologism coined to describe the temporal and emotional disorientation many experienced during the COVID-19 lockdowns when days of the week blurred into one indistinct stretch of time. The solo exhibition, which runs from January 24 – March 19, 2025, presents works by the artist duo Ornaghi & Prestinari, at Continua's Paris space in the heart of the Marais.

For Ornaghi & Prestinari, this term evolves into a metaphor for an abstract state in which time loses its linearity, and the distinction between yesterday, today and tomorrow dissolves. This sense of dissolution gives rise to a blurred emotional landscape. Removed from its original context, Blursday captures the suspended atmosphere and displacement that permeate the art exhibition.

Valentina Ornaghi and Claudio Prestinari began their collaboration in 2009, driven by a shared commitment to developing their work through dialogue and collaboration. Their multidisciplinary approach, shaped by their backgrounds in design, architecture and art history, has become central to their artistic practice. The duo's work explores the domestic, fragile and intimate nature of objects, moving between concept and action, with a particular focus on materiality and manipulation. Themes of delicacy, care, lightness and irony recur throughout their oeuvre.

Blursday unfolds through works that evoke a pervasive sense of uncertainty. In the Sbilenco series, canvases are deliberately misaligned with their frames, destabilising the geometric precision through an imperfect diagonal arrangement. This disruption of structure echoes throughout the show, with distorted proportions, irregular shapes and compositions without a centre, all challenging the Cartesian logic of the frame. The rules of geometry and order are systematically subverted.

This idea of expanding the work beyond the confines of the canvas, playing with emptiness and fullness, also emerges in the triptych Non c’entra niente (Nothing to do with it), where the space between the canvases becomes an integral part of the composition, suggesting a continuous, potentially infinite design.

The rhythmic sequence of arrows in one of the contemporary artworks, leaning against one another like a chain of dominoes, evokes the fluid temporality of Blursday, where the boundaries of the days seem to dissolve. Through such compositional devices, Ornaghi & Prestinari invite a broader reflection on art—not as a means to deliver definitive answers but as a space for posing open questions, stimulating diverse perspectives and tracing new paths.

Ornaghi & Prestinari's practice is deeply attuned to the emotional significance of everyday objects, which transcend their functional role to become carriers of memory and feeling. This concept is exemplified in Vespertino, a sculpture made from repurposed wood of a 1960s furniture design piece, a small beam, a vase and a golden, withered olive branch. The fallen leaves of the branch are transformed into inlays on the wooden shelf below, while some also appear in the drawer, symbolising the way objects hold and evoke memories.

Blursday's disorienting atmosphere is further amplified by newspapers scattered chaotically around the exhibition space. This fragmented visual landscape alludes to the endless, indistinct flow of news on smartphones, where information becomes part of a continuous, blurred stream. The chaotic spread of the pages also recalls a poignant scene from Nanni Moretti's Aprile, where the protagonist, after the birth of his child, releases into the air articles he had accumulated over two decades. This act of throwing them into the air overturns the old order, making room for a new way of seeing life transformed by the experience of parenthood.

With a visual language rich in irony and subtlety, Ornaghi & Prestinari use contrasting materials to create an emotional tension that underscores the fragility and strength of relationships. Their work, as witnessed in Blursday, reveals how the inherent instability of these connections paradoxically gives rise to a mysterious form of balance.