MEMORIES 8

Yellow, orange, green, and black run across the square canvas in horizontal bands, each one a different thickness, each one cut through by the palette knife in its own way. Some bands are wide and smooth, others narrow and broken, and between them the black ground shows through like gaps in a wall where the plaster has fallen away. The overall effect is of something built up over time — layers of colour laid down, scraped back, and laid down again — so that the painting carries its own history visible on the surface.

Lele Fioroni worked as a designer and programmer before committing to painting full-time, and the way this canvas is structured shows that background without spelling it out. The bands read like the stacked levels of a city seen from the air: roads, rooftops, parks, the dark channels between buildings. The scraped edges where one colour meets another are not tidy — they push, overlap, and resist, as if the surface itself has a memory of being moved around. Up close, the knife marks catch lateral light at different angles, making the colours shift depending on where the viewer stands. The painting asks for time, not a quick glance.

The title MEMORIES speaks to what the painting does rather than what it pictures. There is no specific image here — no face, no place, no story — only colour, pressure, and the traces of a hand working through many small decisions. The connection to Shenzhen, where Fioroni settled in 2014 after his first visit in 2009, is felt rather than stated: a city where layers of the new constantly cover the old. There is a methodological parallel with Gerhard Richter's squeegee abstractions — both build surfaces through repeated mechanical action, trusting process over illustration. It belongs on a wall where natural light shifts through the day. Oil on canvas, 60 × 60 cm.