Loris Cecchini — Shapeshifting — Galleria Continua / Paris Matignon — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Ends in 17 days: April 2 → May 30, 2026

Renowned for an interdisciplinary practice that brings together sculpture, installation, and site-specific interventions, the artist explores the subtle interconnections between nature, science, and poetry through the ever-changing conditions of matter. In this new project, Cecchini proposes an investigation of metamorphosis as a generative principle: a narrative in which form is never fixed, but in a constant state of becoming.

The title, Shapeshifting, is not only a thematic statement but the conceptual thread that runs throughout the entire exhibition.

The artist stages a universe in which formal identities transform, hybridizing in a continuous exchange between organic and artificial, micro and macro, structure and fluid. Visitors are invited to enter an environment where matter seems to shape itself in real time, following the same dynamic forces that mold natural landscapes, biological growth, and wave phenomena.

The project brings together, for the first time, a broad and stratified body of works: from the Aeolian Landforms, monochrome surfaces evoking wind-shaped dunes, to the vibrant Wallwave Vibrations, where the wall comes alive with invisible tensions; from the Laminascapes, which amplify vegetal structures into a silver-leaf landscape and Frictions, where aluminum spheres simulate molecular and cosmic processes.

Alongside these established series, a new body of work, Penumbra, has been conceived specifically for this occasion. Here, modular steel structures enter into direct dialogue with living plants, introducing an element of unpredictability: organic growth resists and reconfigures the logic of artificial expansion. The term “penumbra” thus becomes an ontological condition, a zone of indeterminacy in which the boundaries between natural and artificial, control and autonomy, dissolve into a relational and unstable field.

The entire exhibition is permeated by a unifying principle: that of transformation as a lexicon. Cecchini does not represent nature but simulates its generative principles. In this sense, Shapeshifting takes shape as a single, complex organism in flux. Light, color, and texture act as perceptual and emotional vectors, continuously modulating the viewer’s gaze. Cecchini’s work occupies a threshold where matter, subjected to forces of erosion, growth, or vibration, reveals its capacity to constantly negotiate between order and chaos, stasis and movement.

In this solo exhibition, Loris Cecchini envisions reality as an open, dynamic system in constant flux. Shapeshifting is an invitation to enter a space where forms are never fixed, but rather reveal themselves as temporary events within an ongoing process of metamorphosis.

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Loris Cecchini (1969) lives and works in Milan. One of the most prominent Italian artists on the international stage he has exhibited his works throughout the world with solo exhibitions in prestigious museums such as Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint- Étienne Métropole in Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, MoMA PS1 in New York, Shanghai Duolun MoMA of Shanghai, Museo Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela, Kunstverein of Heidelberg, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato and Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan. Loris Cecchini has also taken part in several collective shows, including exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, PAC in Milan, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, Macro Future in Rome, MART in Rovereto, London’s Hayward Gallery, The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Musée d’Art Contemporain of Lyon, Shanghai’s MOCA, the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin and others. He has created various permanent and sitespecific installations, particularly at Villa Celle in Pistoia, at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels and for the Cleveland Clinic’s Arts & Medicine Institute in the United States, at Les Terrasses Du Port in Marseille, at the Shinsegae Hanam Starfield in Seoul and at the Cornell Tech Building in New York and recently at Parco della Luce (Viale Monterosa 91, Milan), at the new Rectorate headquarters of Roma Tre University in Rome, at Lungamanica within the Quirinale Palace, and at the GNAM, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.