I giardini di Piranesi at Galleria Continua pays homage to Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Galleria Continua presents I giardini di Piranesi (The Gardens of Piranesi), a solo exhibition by the Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, on view from May 15 – August 8, 2026, at the gallery’s Rome space. The art exhibition presents a series of drawings and paintings alongside a large-scale installation by the contemporary artist. “At the core of Carlos Garaicoa’s practice has always been the city, understood as a complex and layered organism, shaped by tensions between memory, transformation and possibility. The artist observes architecture and urban landscapes, grasping their underlying structures, their wounds and their dreams—both those that have been abandoned and those still yet to be realised—and then reworks them through a creative process that weaves together past and future,” Galleria Continua notes in the official release.

The contemporary art showcase, which examines the relationship between architecture, memory and transformation, takes inspiration from the legacy of 18th-century Italian artist and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi, whose imaginative depictions of monumental cities and ruins continue to influence contemporary discussions about urban space. “The project can be understood as a form of homage and a shared line of inquiry, especially in the use of drawing as a tool for analysing urban reality and in the idea of the ruin as a starting point for artistic investigation,” the art gallery explains.

At the centre of the exhibition is Contrapeso (Ciudad Plomada), an art installation composed of weighted metal elements positioned on the floor and suspended brass forms hanging above them. “The installation immediately draws the viewer’s eye through the visual tension created by intersecting diagonals and the harmonious interplay of forms,” the gallery notes.

Also on view are drawings and paintings depicting oversized poisonous and carnivorous plants growing among Havana’s deteriorating buildings. By enlarging the vegetation to a scale that rivals the surrounding architecture, Garaicoa shifts attention from the built environment to the forces that challenge and outlast it. “In this context, the dialogue with Piranesi becomes more explicit: the 18th-century artist not only imagined prisons and cities overwhelmed by their own monumentality, but also conceived the garden as a space of power, order and representation, as demonstrated by his intervention at the Villa Magistrale dei Cavalieri di Malta on the Aventine Hill,” the gallery explains.

I giardini di Piranesi draws parallels with Piranesi’s interest in gardens. In Garaicoa’s interpretation, plants invade the urban environment, “becoming a critical metaphor for the fragility of the modern project and the social conflicts that emerge between utopia and survival. This line of inquiry is further developed in the installation Contrapeso (Ciudad Plomada), which extends Piranesi’s legacy by proposing the image of a city suspended between balance and threat,” Galleria Continua concludes.