The Italian Cultural Institute in Montreal inaugurated yesterday the photography exhibition “The Shape of Air” by Luca Spano, a project selected through the 2024 Call for the Promotion of Italian Photography Abroad, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Curated by Giangavino Pazzola, the exhibition presents two previously unseen series of works that merge art and science in a speculative dialogue on the exploration of non-optical imagery—those visual processes that allow the human brain to create mental images using all senses except sight.
The opening evening was attended by the Ambassador of Italy to Canada, Alessandro Cattaneo, who took the opportunity to welcome the new Director of the Institute, Francesca Calamaro, and to offer his best wishes as she begins her new role.
The exhibition will be open to the public from August 28 to October 25, 2025. Straddling the line between sculpture and installation, the works are created on glass—a material historically linked to photography—onto which reinterpretations of conversations between the artist and researchers are fixed. These dialogues took place during a residency at the Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience Program (BRaIN) of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.
