Group Show at Gallery Vernon

Galerie Vernon is a contemporary art gallery in Munich that presents painting, sculpture and photography through themed exhibitions and events. Federico Clapis took part in a group show there in the early phase of his career, shortly after leaving his work as a video creator on social media to devote himself entirely to art.

The images that remain show a small, quiet presentation in white rooms. Clapis' work on view is a sculpture on a white plinth: a black metal wire structure in the shape of a house, with a pitched roof and a grid of bars like a cage, enclosing a small white figure of a standing man. It seems to correspond to Prison Home, one of the works from his first period, in which the domestic space becomes a cage and the human figure is reduced to a pale, almost anonymous presence. The light falling on the plinth multiplies the grid in shadows around it. A short video from the opening shows visitors talking in front of a white wall work with small objects applied to the canvas.

The Munich show belongs to the years in which Clapis was building his practice outside Italy through group exhibitions in commercial galleries, testing the themes of isolation, identity and the relationship between people and their environment that would later return, in other forms, in his sculptures about technology.