The title for the show offers context to these works on paper by Francesco Poiana. It is a phrase used to describe a state of openness, a land where truth abounds because there are no shadows in which falsity can hide. It is also taken as the title to a 2015 publication by Anna Ottani Cavina professor of History of Art at the University of Bologna, in which she charts the indelible reaction to the light and colours of Italy by those 17th-19th European artists who travelled South. There is a fundamental honesty in making marks on paper – interpreting the world as one sees it through the construction of images from raw shape and colour. Francesco Poiana’s work is a joyous and playful interaction with landscape across multiple mediums, communicating lived experience through emotional responses to colour. Poiana’s life and work unfold between places of cultural crossing. Born and raised in a borderland between Italy and Slovenia – where languages, traditions and terrains intertwine – he now lives and works in London, continuing his exploration of identity and place through drawing, painting, and printmaking. Not wedded to any one strict method, his work is instead a series of explorations representing moments of curiosity and shifting attachments to technique.

Central to this exhibition is a new series of carborundum prints – a medium that allows Poiana to combine texture, depth, and colour in a tactile, almost sculptural way. These limited-edition prints, along with several one-off pieces, such as the monotypes and watercolours, are often retouched and hand-painted, inhabiting a ‘terra di mezzo’ – a middle land – that escapes the constraints of any singular technique. These works extend his dialogue with material and light, offering fresh territory to explore how form and atmosphere emerge through layering and textural surface effects. For Poiana, mark making remains a foundational daily source of physical pleasure and discovery. It is a form of play and meditation, where focused attention and surrender to chance coexist.

In Terre senz’ombra, Poiana finds a focal point in light – specifically the period of fleeting illumination in the fragile intersection between night and day – considering the beauty and physicality of form created by the meeting of colours. The works are an explosion of exuberant, contrasting, almost Fauvist colour that define the landscape and eliminate darkness. Terre senz’ombra is not a fixed geography, but a shifting threshold – a celebration of what flickers and escapes yet leaves a trace – these are not literal landscapes, but emotional and sensorial terrains shaped by perception, intuition and memory. At times, the images seem to slip beyond representation, moving towards the abstract realm of the sublime; an invitation to pause and enter a liminal space. Poiana’s works unfold gently, asking for attention without demanding it, allowing themselves to be discovered rather than explained.