From September 23, 2025, to January 16, 2026, 21Gallery presents, at its Padua location, a solo exhibition by Gonzalo Borondo (Valladolid, 1989), a young Spanish artist who has already exhibited his works at the United Nations Museum in Berlin, MACRO in Rome, and the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art in Segovia.
Curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, Gonzalo Borondo’s solo exhibition is housed in Palazzo Colonne (Via San Francesco 34, Padua), a building of architectural merit and historical and artistic interest, which was refurbished in 2025 by the Fosbury Architecture collective.
The title of the exhibition – Porta l’acqua un fuoco fermo (Bring Water to a Steady Fire) – is taken from the text that Spanish poet Ángela Segovia dedicated to the author and his research. Gonzalo Borondo is an artist who manages to blend his “unconventional” education (at fourteen in Madrid he was already practicing graffiti, tagging around the city), punk, and DIY with a composite cultural amalgam that, from the fantastic scenes inspired by the dreams and supernatural world of Francisco Goya, passes through the inner exploration and search for the absolute in the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky. He then continues his investigation of the different relationships between the physical body and the architectural or natural space with which it interacts, following in the footsteps of Antony Gormley, before arriving at William Kentridge and his combinatorial method of drawing, writing, film, performance, music, theater, and collaborative practices to create works of art rooted in politics, literature, and history. Borondo’s formative years—in which his mentor José García Herranz also played a part—revealed an artist with a dual identity: on the one hand, a graffiti artist and, on the other, a ‘classical’ painter (the son of a restorer, no less).
The exhibition includes numerous works, many of which are large-scale, including impressive triptychs on glass created in 2025 and the installation Bruma, which occupies an entire room of the gallery. The layout is designed to welcome the public into a personal and intimate art gallery. The Spanish artist seems to remind us that his is not just a formal quest, because he also intends to restore soul, ethics, and civic commitment to form, drawing on the essence of a forgotten past, nostalgia, dreams, and memories betrayed in the present.
During the exhibition, the first Italian monograph dedicated to Gonzalo Borondo will be published and presented, with various contributions, including a critical essay by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and a poetic piece by Ángela Segovia. The Padua venue (Via San Francesco, 34) is open Tuesday to Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. or by appointment.
For information: info@21gallery.it, twentyoneart.com. Free admission.
