From 21 January to 7 February 2026, the Milan spaces of the Deodato Arte Gallery will host “Sospesi: Italia verticale”, the new solo exhibition by Jacopo Di Cera. The project comes after more than ten years of research on the Italian human and cultural landscape, observed from an unusual vantage point: above.
It is from this distance — physical but above all perceptual — that a visual atlas of contemporary Italy takes shape, capable of transforming everyday scenes into symbolic maps.
The opening, scheduled for Wednesday 21 January at 6:30 pm at Via Nerino 1 in Milan, accompanies the presentation of White Entropy, the site-specific project for SEA Milan Airports recently unveiled at the PhotoSquare of Milan Malpensa and included in the Cultural Olympiad of Milano Cortina 2026. It marks a particularly significant moment for the artist, who deepens a coherent reflection on the relationship between gaze, territory, and collective memory.
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Italy Seen from Above: A Conceptual Gesture
In Sospesi: Italia verticale, Di Cera overturns the tradition of photographic vision: he does not use verticality as a technical device, but as a conceptual act. Raising one’s gaze means suspending time, reorganizing roles, placing bodies, gestures, and places on the same plane. Up close, Italy appears fragmented; from above, surprisingly ordered.
Crowded beaches, squares, tracks, suburbs, places of community rituals all transform into living patterns. The summer season with its composite chaos, urban crowds, sports or religious events become surfaces to be read rather than simply viewed: spontaneous geographies where each individual is a point, a rhythm, part of a larger design.
An Emotional Atlas of the Country
The exhibition gathers more than 25 works, including photographs and digital video loops. A dialogue between instant and duration: images freeze unexpected geometries, while videos stretch time until it becomes meditative.
Throughout the exhibition, emblematic moments of “Italian-ness” emerge:
- the Palio Marinaro dell’Argentario,
- the bright beaches of Rosignano,
- championship celebrations,
- the Barcolana regatta.
Not mere documentation, but fragments of a collective rituality that withstands the passage of time. Di Cera’s approach combines photographic rigor with an almost painterly sensitivity: the composition is precise, yet color and atmosphere always suggest an elsewhere, an emotional margin that goes beyond the factual image.
Between Map and Flow: Italy Reassembled
It is in the combination of stillness and movement that Sospesi: Italia verticale finds its balance. The photographic works offer form; the videos, breath. One is a map, the other a flow. And between these two languages, a new reading of the country emerges, free from rhetoric and hierarchy: an Italy suspended between concreteness and symbol, identity and transformation.
As Di Cera himself states:
“Changing one’s point of view does not only mean looking differently. Sometimes it means seeing for the first time.”
With this exhibition, the artist invites us to do exactly that: to lift ourselves, even just a few meters, to perceive what habit often prevents us from seeing. A vertical Italy that finds in height a new depth.