“I’M INTERESTED in the moments just before something shifts, when calm starts to feel uncertain”, Vienna-based artist Cecilia De Nisco says of her practice.
Unsettling forms fold and morph together into surreal, otherworldly entanglements in De Nisco’s paintings. “The figures often emerge from images drawn from everyday life, memory, desire and personal experiences,” explains De Nisco. Continuing, “it is also through the bodies that I seek to create a sense of ambiguity. I do not necessarily start with a specific story, and the figures do not embody a defined narrative. Rather, I am interested in creating a tension – often linked to desire and intimacy – while leaving the situation open to the viewer’s interpretation.”
Cecilia De Nisco, Not yet titled #1 (2026). Oil on canvas, 30 x 130 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and VIN VIN Vienna.
Her forms are suspended, caught in moments of stillness, fluid tangles of limbs trapped in paint. They waft between tangible flesh and blood and apparitions that blend into their dark environments. In one work, Not yet titled #2, five heads melt into one another like a human Hydra of Greek mythology, their hands groping at one another and mouths agape. In another, Not yet titled #1, two bodies laid on top of one another become like the horizon, the torso and legs a perfect line, just undulating as the head curves upwards. “I create situations that may seem familiar, yet at the same time remain ambiguous and difficult to define.” De Nisco explains.
These unsettling paintings are part of a new body of work presented at VIN VIN gallery in dialogue with works by Italian sculptor Lydia Silvestri. Silvestri was an Italian sculptor who created work focused on the female form. Working with bronze, stoneware and Murano glass, Silvestri’s fluid forms and semi-abstract figures contrast with the solidity of her materials. Working in the 1960s-80s, Silvestri’s sculptures anticipated a more fluid understanding of identity, desire and vulnerability, with many of her sculptures incorporating phallic forms, breasts and buttocks.
Cecilia De Nisco, Not Yet Titled #2 (2026). Oil on canvas, 70 x 40cm. Image courtesy of the artist and VIN VIN Vienna
Cecilia De Nisco, Not yet titled #5, 2026. 24 x 18 cm, oil on panel. Image courtesy of the artist and VIN VIN Vienna
The exhibition, I’m Very Into You, takes place as part of curated by 2026, where 24 Vienna-based galleries invite international curators to respond to a yearly changing theme through exhibitions, as a platform for artistic change. VIN VIN, based in Vienna, was established ten years ago to support emerging international artists whose practices engage with contemporary life.
The theme for this year’s exhibition is love, something that both Silvestri and De Nisco foreground in their work. “An interesting dialogue emerges around the body, intimacy and ambiguity – themes that feature in both our practices. I find it fascinating to see how these themes are explored by two generations and through two very different artistic languages,” De Nisco says.
Portrait of Cecilia De Nisco. Photo: Veronica Brunoni. Courtesy of the artist and VIN VIN Vienna.
“Working sixty years apart, Lydia Silvestri and Cecilia De Nisco both treat the body as a field where desire and power, tenderness and violence coexist”, exhibition curator Marta Papini explains. Papini brings two artists working in different mediums and different centuries together through a thread of the unsettling nature of love: “neither is willing to portray love as something reassuring: for them, it is exposure, risk, a loss of boundaries,” Papini says.
by Sadie Pitcher
I’m Very Into You is on show at VIN VIN, Vienna, from 15th September – 17th October 2026.