Elena El Asmar. Le Fantasmagoriche

From March 26th to May 2nd, 2026, BUILDING TERZO PIANO presents Le Fantasmagoriche, a solo exhibition by Elena El Asmar (Florence, 1978), curated by Marina Dacci. The project brings together a corpus of over forty artworks, including sculptures and wall works on glass, wood, and paper—created between 2008 and 2026—conceived as a unified intervention designed for the spaces of the third floor. The exhibition takes the form as an organic, immersive ensemble in which sculpture and two-dimensional artworks engage in dialogue with one another.

In her research, Elena El Asmar explores the relationship that has always existed within the human between space, memory, and imagination, translating the experience of memory into visual and narrative structures. Through a practice that spans drawing, painting, installation, and words, the work takes the form of a process of continuous stratification and transformation, nourished by a tension between geographies and belongings, in which matter and light become tools for observing and crossing time.

Landscape is the focus of the exhibition, understood not only as physical space but also as inner space. “The works speak to us of a space within us made up of the vibrations of stars, the intensity of the sky, the depth of the waters, and the furrows of birds’ flight… a space that is dreamt and dreamy, fragile and fleeting” (Marina Dacci).

The essence of Elena El Asmar’s research lies in an intimate approach that germinates on the threshold between wakefulness and dreams, where perceptual experience becomes vision and the space-time dimension manifests itself in suspended stratifications, perpetually in motion.

Visitors are greeted by a series of watercolors, painted in shades ranging from sky blue to indigo with touches of gold, which give off a special light from the surface of the paper. The works depict Venice (2020), Rome (2025), Siena (2023), Rapolano (2025), Castiglioncello (2025), Salento with Otranto (2023) and Santa Cesarea Terme (2023), and even the legendary Baalbek (2022).

In the main space of BUILDING TERZO PIANO, L’esercizio del lontano (2010/2026) takes shape: a series of sculptures composed of found glass, collected and assembled, covered with special perforated fabrics. They look like windows with grilles through which you can glimpse the vastness of the “outside.”

An outside that takes shape in Studio Portraits (2024-2025), wall works created with oil and acrylic on wood, and in the collage on wood Siparietto (2026). Here, the vision is embodied in essential geometric forms, with an archetypal character, that refer to sidereal distances.

The arrangement of the works in the space recalls a musical score, suggesting its rhythm, pauses, and resonances.

In a niche in the room, Le ore terse (2008), a drawing engraved on glass invites the viewer to move around in search of the image in relation to the light that reveals it. “It is an evanescent image, almost an ectoplasm that comes to life when you want to see it” (Marina Dacci). Once again, as in the sculptures, the glass allows itself to be crossed, reflects and carries beyond.

Le Fantasmagoriche constructs a universe in constant suspension, in which the body, implicitly present in the landscape, floats in it while experienceing it. El Asmar urges us to grasp its subtle connections, both visible and invisible.