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I conceive space as a dense and undefined matter. It is the sculptor’s task to give it orientation, direction, and movement. Only then does form reveal its own limits, and space becomes palpable.  — Gabriele Risso

In Vita Immobile, Gabriele Risso presents a selection of sculptural works developed since 2024, marking his debut solo exhibition. Presented at The Chapel at Brompton Cemetery, the exhibition explores how sculpture gives presence to space and how ordinary objects, approached through measurement and making, can open onto broader questions of perception, representation, and convention. 
The exhibition unfolds across three tables: a circular table at the centre of the Chapel with still lifes, and two side tables with scale studies for large scale works. Organised through interconnected themes, it follows the path of the artist’s study series, tracing how he returns to similar compositions as if guided by a rigorous geometric logic, while at the same time probing the truth of sculpture and space through both measurement and imagination. Working from what might seem the most conventional sculptural premise, still life, Risso reconfigures ordinary objects and familiar representations to question how they are seen, both individually and in relation to one another, treating them not as static subjects but as occasions to rethink how sculpture, and the act of sculpting, can disclose form and spatial presence.

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“In Latin languages, ‘still life’ is translated as ‘natura morta,’ but that doesn’t quite capture the sense of stillness in English. It’s the quiet immobility of things that makes a place possible. I would translate it into Italian as vita immobile (‘immobile life’).”

Risso works primarily with figurative imagery, which appears less as a fully conscious decision than as a direction emerging through the process of making. Although the work was initially grounded in a more abstract engagement with space and the body, it gradually turned towards representation by beginning from things directly observed and physically accessible within the studio environment. What fascinates the artist is the way figuration opens onto a deeper search for the fundamental nature of things through the most ordinary objects.

Risso’s sculptural practice is profoundly informed by the legacy of pioneering modernist sculptors including Constantin Brâncuși, Alberto Giacometti, Isamu Noguchi and Eduardo Chillida, as well as contemporary artists such as Antony Gormley and Rachel Whiteread. Equally important is the influence of his first sculpture tutor, Massimo Chiappetta, with whom he studied in Genoa, Italy. He returns through them to sculpture’s most persistent questions: what is sculpture, and how does it give meaning to space? At the centre of his practice is an ongoing re-examination of the sculptural method itself, particularly through the tension between revelation and concealment in the making process. As Risso has said, this is a way of “purify[ing] the eyes from the most conventional methods” of approaching a simple block of stone.

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Conceived in relation to the cemetery setting, the exhibition reconsiders what can be seen and what remains unseen, and to the way the gravestone, as a motif of death, activates space through the slippery quality of stone itself: shifting from nature to culture, from object to landscape, from place to monument. The setting holds particular significance in relation to the artist’s own attachment to the gravestone, as seen in his Stone Tears series, which is not included in the exhibition.

 

A small publication accompanies the exhibition, providing an additional insight into Gabriele Risso’s drawings, thought processes, and an interview with the curator Catherine Li.

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About the artist

Gabriele Risso (1992, Genoa, Italy) is a sculptor currently living and working in London, UK. He studied Sculpture at the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa and the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera, Milan, before continuing his training in Paris and London. These diverse experiences have profoundly shaped his approach to sculpture. 

In 2020, he was commissioned by the Salesian community to create a permanent, site-specific installation for the Museo Casa Don Bosco in Turin. Since then, he has continued to develop his practice through exhibitions across the UK. He became a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2024, and in 2025 he was awarded the Marsh Award for Best in Show at the Society’s Summer Exhibition and selected as a finalist for the First Plinth Award.

www.gabrielerisso.com