Luca Vanello
b. 1986, Italy
Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium
Gratitude Permeates Childhood, 2018
Through sculpture and installation, Luca Vanello works with material and temporal transformation – slowing, suspending, or accelerating organic processes to form altered environments where notions of the natural and artificial converge.
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Luca Vanello is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersection of technology and nature’s cycles. By examining how both natural and human-made materials shape conditions of vulnerability, vitality, coexistence, and dissonance, Vanello critically engages with the manipulative processes of technological systems. His sculptures function as material edits of temporality, using acceleration, reversal, and pauses to abstract natural transformation. A central aspect of his practice involves harvesting discarded plants and removing their chlorophyll as if to suspend the energy they once carried.
His immersive installations often combine hybrid plant-technology compositions, forming speculative environments where the boundaries between the natural and artificial collapse. Through careful material choices, Vanello builds works that hold space for protection, tension, concealment, and support. Moving between large-scale and intimate sculptural forms, he draws attention to the physical and temporal scales that quietly shape our worlds. This materially sensitive approach is guided by a poetic practice that informs both the titles and the presence of his works in space. His environments propose new forms of kinship, vulnerability, and interdependence, offering alternate visions of coexistence in a fragmented ecological present.
Vanello studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin and earned an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 2020, he completed a residency at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent, Belgium.
Selected exhibitions include: Expo 2024, Horst Arts and Music Festival; 10n, Fondation Fiminco, Paris; Biennale d'Enghien (2022); M HKA, Antwerp; Netwerk Aalst, Aalst; Verbeke Foundation, Belgium; Whitehouse Gallery, Lovenjoel; Pilar, Brussels; Maison des Arts Georges & Claude Pompidou, Cajarc; Sonsbeek 20–24, Netherlands; Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée, La Louvière; Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp; Kunstenfestival Watou (2021); Casa Atelier, MUSEION, Bolzano (solo); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (solo); Qalandiya International Biennale, Ramallah; Fondazione Ratti, Como; Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada; OUTPOST, Norwich (solo); Museum für Fotografie, Berlin; and The Showroom, London.
His immersive installations often combine hybrid plant-technology compositions, forming speculative environments where the boundaries between the natural and artificial collapse. Through careful material choices, Vanello builds works that hold space for protection, tension, concealment, and support. Moving between large-scale and intimate sculptural forms, he draws attention to the physical and temporal scales that quietly shape our worlds. This materially sensitive approach is guided by a poetic practice that informs both the titles and the presence of his works in space. His environments propose new forms of kinship, vulnerability, and interdependence, offering alternate visions of coexistence in a fragmented ecological present.
Vanello studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin and earned an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 2020, he completed a residency at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent, Belgium.
Selected exhibitions include: Expo 2024, Horst Arts and Music Festival; 10n, Fondation Fiminco, Paris; Biennale d'Enghien (2022); M HKA, Antwerp; Netwerk Aalst, Aalst; Verbeke Foundation, Belgium; Whitehouse Gallery, Lovenjoel; Pilar, Brussels; Maison des Arts Georges & Claude Pompidou, Cajarc; Sonsbeek 20–24, Netherlands; Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée, La Louvière; Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp; Kunstenfestival Watou (2021); Casa Atelier, MUSEION, Bolzano (solo); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (solo); Qalandiya International Biennale, Ramallah; Fondazione Ratti, Como; Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada; OUTPOST, Norwich (solo); Museum für Fotografie, Berlin; and The Showroom, London.
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Artworks
Libidinous drip makes home on lignin veins, acre humidity reminds, 2024
Looping particles console silent interlocutor, 2024
Recurrent effervescence, 2022
Looping particles console silent interlocutor, 2024
Gratitude Permeates Childhood, 2018
Selected Exhibitions
Weird Double
Jul 17 – Aug 24, 2024
Menorca, Brussels
Menorca, Brussels
Symbiosium: Cosmogonies spéculatives
Mar 17 – May 6, 2023
Fondation Fiminco, Paris
Fondation Fiminco, Paris
Libidinous drip makes home on lignin veins, acre humidity reminds
2024
Vilvoorde, Brussels
Vilvoorde, Brussels
Laying on a pillow, two black eyes
2021
Netwerk Aalst, Aalst, Belgium
Netwerk Aalst, Aalst, Belgium
Press
Special Projects
Various celluloses, plexiglas sheet, various papers, various inks, various pigments, various metals, various plastics, various types of wood, wadding, shredded foam, shredded paper, plastic bags, plastic containers, various textiles, various types of dirt, water. 590 x 375 x 150 cm
Meisterschülerausstellung
Universität der Künste Berlin
2013
A found shelter previously used by a person experiencing homelessness was removed and later deconstructed. All the found objects and the first interior layers of the space were reversed back to their original material condition.