Superfici instabili | Group Show: Lyndon Barrois Jr., Mario Cresci, Ayla Dmyterko, Maïmouna Guerresi, Tomoe Hikita, Jeanine Richards, Flora Temnouche

If the surface has traditionally been understood as a limit - a plane that contains, orders, and stabilizes the image - Unstable Surfaces instead proposes a field in constant flux, where what appears is always shaped by transformations, interferences, and stratifications. This collaborative project brings together a selection of artists whose practices, while distinct, share an interest in the image as an open process, never fully stable or definitive.

The exhibition constructs a visual landscape in which works do not present themselves as closed surfaces, but as active spaces traversed by memory, reflections, and material tensions. Painting, video, and photography become devices through which the image takes form, shifts, and redefines itself over time.

The works of Lyndon Barrois Jr., Mario Cresci, Ayla Dmyterko, Maïmouna Guerresi, Tomoe Hikita, Jeanine Richards, and Flora Temnouche challenge the idea of the image as something fixed and complete, offering instead porous, permeable surfaces subject to continuous rewriting.

In the works on display, the surface becomes a site of intervention and negotiation. In painting, the image is built through accumulation, omission, and misalignment: everyday objects, reflections, and variations of light introduce instabilities that prevent a single, unified reading, as in the suspended compositions of Flora Temnouche. In works such as those by Lyndon Barrois Jr., the support itself is traversed by transfers and materials that layer temporalities and visual references, while in Ayla Dmyterko’s video the surface is constantly redefined through dynamics of transformation tied to processes of loss and reappropriation.

In Jeanine Richards’ work, the surface extends beyond the painting to unfold within the exhibition space: objects, structures, and images function as interdependent elements, questioning the distinction between artwork, display, and narrative. Similarly, in Mario Cresci’s practice, the surface is linked to memory, territory, and the construction of vision, while in Maïmouna Guerresi’s works the image takes on a symbolic and constructed dimension, where identity, representation, and staging intertwine.

Finally, in Tomoe Hikita’s work, the pictorial surface develops through gesture and layering, generating unstable images marked by tensions between figuration and abstraction.

In this context, the surface does not function as a boundary or closure, but as a zone of instability, where materials, images, and temporalities remain in precarious balance without resolving into a definitive form. The result is an exhibition space defined by shifts and discontinuities, in which the works do not simply occupy a position but introduce variations in the way space itself is perceived.

BIO:

Lyndon Barrois Jr. (b. New Orleans, LA) is an artist and educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is an assistant professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University. He is half of LAB-D, with artist Addoley Dzegede, with whom he has collaboratively staged four exhibitions, and co-authored a book of essays (Elleboog, at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2019).

Barrois Jr. received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2013), and his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (2006). He has completed residencies at LATITUDE, Chicago, Illinois; Loghaven in Knoxville, Tennessee; the Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (Netherlands); Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland (Canada), and the IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (Ireland). Most recently, he was the 2025 Starr Fellow at the Royal Academy Schools in London.

Mixing elements of film production—such as stills, posters, and at times sets, and props–Lyndon Barrois Jr.’s current work draws from the heist film genre and the museum context to engage with legacies of colonial extraction. His practice investigates methods of deception, moments of conviction—whether in magic, cinema, or theatre—and the shifting systems of value that underpin them. He approaches art-making, conservation, and forgery as intertwined acts of illusion, adapting cinematic structures to create what he terms static filmmaking: installations that suggest a cinematic narrative without the use of moving images. Through this approach, cinema becomes a vehicle for temporal and geographic travel, opening up considerations of anachronism, simultaneity, and reanimation.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Twofold (w/ Addoley Dzegede), Barnes Ogden Gallery, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA, USA (2026); Hand of Glory, Royal Academy of Arts, London UK (2025); Rue Daguerre, Gallery Closed, Pittsburgh, PA, USA (2024); Forum 86: Rosette, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, USA (2023); Mercantile (w/ Addoley Dzegede), Sharp Projects, Copenhagen, DK (2022); Mirage Collar, Artists Space, New York, NY (2022), amongst others. Selected recent group exhibitions include: Camera Obscura, Public Gallery, London (2025); Possibility for Repair, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH, USA (2024); The Last Train After the Last Train, Public Gallery, London, UK (2023); Looking Back: White Columns Annual Exhibition, White Columns, New York, NY (2023); and The Regional, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2022); among others. His work is in important private and public collections including the Jorge M. Pérez Collection / El Espacio 23, Miami, FL; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; The Bunker Artspace; West Palm Beach, Florida; and the Danish Art Council, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Upcoming solo exhibitions will be held at Alma Pearl, London (2026) and the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (US) (2026).

Mario Cresci (b. 1942) is a leading figure in the development of experimental photography in Italy since the 1960s.
Trained within a multidisciplinary framework in Venice, his practice evolved in dialogue with the concerns of the Arte Povera, and was shaped by the work of artists such as Pino Pascali, Yannis Kounellis, and Alighiero Boetti. His research positions photography as a cognitive and analytical tool, extending beyond representation toward the construction of meaning.
In 1969, at Galleria Il Diaframma in Milan, he realized Europe’s first “photographic Environnement,” a serial installation that critically addressed consumer culture through the repetition and circulation of images. He participated multiple times in the Venice Biennale (1978, 1993, 1995).
During the 1970s, while based in Matera, Cresci integrated photography with cultural anthropology, orienting his work toward a systematic investigation of urban and social contexts (Matera, immagini e documenti, 1975). In the 1980s, he contributed to a redefinition of landscape in photographic discourse, also in relation to Viaggio in Italia by Luigi Ghirri.
From 1974, a selection of his works entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, alongside those of Ghirri, marking early international recognition of his contribution to conceptual photography. His work is now held in major public collections and research institutions, including the MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Pinacoteca Nazionale, and GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea, among others.
Alongside his artistic practice, Cresci has developed an extensive pedagogical and theoretical activity. He has taught at the Fondazione Fotografia Modena and at ISIA Urbino, contributing to the formation of new generations of practitioners in contemporary visual culture. He lives and works in Bergamo.

Ayla Dmyterko's artworks reckon with the possession and dispossession of lands, objects, bodies, and skies, drawn from both lived and collective experience. In a remedial response, she embraces a culture–nature synthesis. Grounded in lineages of painting, her practice at times expands into moving image, performance, material cultures, and text, echoing the noumenal nature of cultural memory. Her works function as animist rituals referencing psychedelia, the Ukrainian Avant-Garde, transcendentalist painting, and the aura of archival objects, with particular attention to her experience of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.

Recent solo exhibitions include Ring Around the Sun & We Rage On, Alma Pearl, London (2025); Liberate Thee, Angel of History, Pangée, Montréal, Canada (2023); Vyshyvani Kazky, Embroidered Stories, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada (2022); and The Story Began With a Beet (It Must End With The Devil), Pangée, Montréal, Canada (2015).

Selected group exhibitions include Fools for Truth, Pangée, Montréal, Canada (2025); Viaggi / Journeys, Alma Pearl, London (2025); Antigone Revisited, curated by Marcelle Joseph, Hypha Studios, London (2024); What We Mean to Say, Banff Centre, Canada (2024); Soil Horizon, KIKRKI Projects, Sifnos Island, Greece (2024); Bitch Magic, Alma Pearl, London (2024); and The Grass at Our Feet, VITRINE, Basel, Switzerland.

Maïmouna Guerresi (b. 1951, Vicenza, Italy) is a multimedia artist whose practice spans photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Her work investigates the spiritual dimensions of humanity, offering an intimate perspective on mystical experience. Through fluid narratives, her creations transcend psychological, cultural, and political boundaries, emphasizing connection, community, and the sacred nature of the human experience. Her works often transform figures and spaces into symbolic realms, revealing profound insights about the soul and collective identity.                                              

Guerresi has exhibited widely across Europe, Africa, the U.S., Asia, and the Middle East. 

Notably, her work has been featured at the Venice Biennale (1982, 1986) and Documenta 8 (1987), as well as in major institutions like the National Museum of Bamako, Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, I.M.A. in Paris, New Orleans Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Bahrain National Museum, Sharjah Art Museum, Wereld Museum, C/O Berlin Foundation, the 13th Cairo Biennale, The Lagos Photo Festival, LOBA Leica Oskar Barnack Award, Shanghai Center of Photography, Gallery Gongbech, and Kyotographie, among others. 

She has collaborated with several prestigious museums, including the Royal Ontario Museum, Aga Khan Museum, Fotografiska Museum Shanghai, and Tate Modern in London.

Her works are part of prestigious collections around the world, such as the LACMA in Los Angeles, Boghossian Foundation, Palazzo Forti in Verona, MIA in Minneapolis, Museum of African, Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. 

For over two decades, Guerresi has focused on empowering women and fostering intercultural dialogue, celebrating the shared spiritual and human connections that transcend borders.
She is represented by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City) and Matèria (Rome).

Tomoe Hikita (Japan, 1985) lives and works in Nuremberg, Germany. From 2015 to 2022, Tomoe Hikita studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg under Professor Susanne Kühn. From 2004 to 2008, she earned her bachelor’s degree at Bunka Gakuen University in Japan.In Hikita’s work, the lightness of color is used to recreate, by contrast, an impression of solidity in the image, which asserts itself in a dominant way. Wood becomes the support that allows color to acquire an expressiveness that merges with the lines of the painting. Depth and lightness thus take on the role of two fundamental constants in the organic development of the image, which arises from the combination of soft and rigid materials and is activated through the spatial impressions that surround it. Hikita develops a distinctive use of color along with a highly personal approach to background and foreground. Her research condenses a focused attention on the return of a painterly dimension nourished by lines, rhythms, and continuously shifting tonalities. Among her solo exhibitions: Wir schamlosen Geschöpfe, Galerie Oechsner, Nuremberg (2026); Just like helium, curated by Davide Ferri, z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome (2024); Da Sein, Kulturort Badstraße 8, Fürth (2024); Linie, linie und Linie, Städtische Galerie Schwabach, Schwabach. Recent group exhibitions include: TBA, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin (2026); LOCALIZE we will see, Festival for City Culture and Art Potsdam, Potsdam (2025); Through a wall, Through a wall, Through a memory, debut exhibition with Veronika Haller, Kreis Galerie, Nuremberg (2024); Contrappunti, z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome (2024); wenn es regnet, ist mein herz nacht, Circolo Lia, Alto Adige (2023); TERRA INCOGNITA, Galerie Oechsner, Nuremberg (2023); Outside the line, z2o Sara Zanin Gallery, Rome (2022); Vom Sonnenuntergang, Galleria Galvani, Nuremberg (2021).

Jeanine Richards (b. 1968, Cambridge, UK) is an artist based in London. Her multidisciplinary practice is structured around an investigation of painting as both image and object, while also encompassing works on paper, sculpture, textiles, and installation. Since 1998, she has worked collaboratively as part of the artist duo Cullinan Richards, exhibiting in notable institutional venues including Sharjah Art Foundation (2003); South London Gallery, London (2003); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2004); Hayward Gallery, London (2010); Tramway, Glasgow (2010), and Cooper Gallery, Dundee (2016-17) among others. Recent exhibitions include Physical Chemistry, Alma Pearl, London (2026); Back to School, Chequers London (curated by Cecile Tulkens and Anna Howard) (2025) and SupaStore Yes!, 12 Hammersmith Grove / HS Projects, London (2025), a project by Sarah Staton. Jeanine Richards has lectured across art schools in the UK and abroad, and from 2004 to 2019 she was Associate Professor at Kingston School of Art. In 1992 she was awarded the Abbey Major scholarship at the British School in Rome and in 2012 was amongst the selectors of New Contemporaries.

Flora Temnouche (1995) lives in Berlin. She was born and raised in France, where she studied Modern Literature and Art History in Paris at the Sorbonne University, before continuing her education at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf until 2023 in the class of Katharina Wulff.Her works have been exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions across Europe and the United States, in private galleries such as A+B Gallery, Megan Mulrooney Gallery, and Galerie Elsa Meunier. She has also participated in online exhibitions, including In Presence with Painters Painting Paintings and Paper Works with Taymour Grahne Projects in London.She has additionally exhibited in public spaces such as Ghetto Novo in Venice, Kultur Bahnhof Eller, the Kunstpalast, and Villa Maeterlinck in Nice. Her works are part of the collection of the X Museum, and she was selected for a residency at Palazzo Galli Tassi in Florence.

INFO:

Lyndon Barrois Jr., Mario Cresci, Ayla Dmyterko, Maïmouna Guerresi, Tomoe Hikita, Jeanine Richards, Flora Temnouche

Unstable Surfaces

Opening Tuesday, May 12^th, 2026 | 6 - 9 PM

May 12^th, 2026 > June 13^th, 2026

z2o Project, Via Baccio Pontelli 16, 1^st floor - 00153 Rome

Opening hours: Thursday to Saturday | 12 - 7 PM

T. +39 06 80073146 | info@z2ogalleria.it