Galleria Area\B

Founded in 2008 with a focus on young, emerging Italian art, particularly painting. The cradle of the Italian Newbrow art movement since its inception, it was represented by an initial core group of 10 artists, which has evolved and developed into a larger group, consistently devoted to figuration, realism, and pop surrealism. Today, the gallery’s work also includes Old Masters, traditional pop art, and 19th-century and modern Italian art. Our goal has always been to contribute to the creation of a new generation of art collectors whose culture and backgrounds are similar to those of our artists and our exhibitions.

The selection of artists chosen by Galleria Area\B for YouNique 2026:

IRENE BALIA
ANTONIO BARDINO
MARCO BETTIO
LAURA GIARDINO
SARAH LEDDA
NICOLA NANNINI
RAFFAELE SANTILLO

IRENE BALIA

Irene Balia was born in Iglesias in 1985. After graduating in 2004, she moved to Sassari and continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, obtaining an academic diploma in painting in 2009. She has been a finalist for various awards, including the Michetti Prize and the CO.CO.CO.-contemporary contest Como prize (2013) and the Lissone Prize (2014). In 2017, she completed her first public commission at the Cittadella degli Archivi in ​​Milan. In 2020, she participated in the international residency program of the Macc Foundation in Calasetta. She has exhibited in various institutional spaces and national and international galleries, including: Pinacoteca Mus’A (Sassari), Schultz gallery (Berlin), Esentai gallery (Almaty), Villa Clerici (Milan). She currently lives and works in Milan.

ANTONIO BARDINO

Antonio Bardino, born in Alghero (SS), lives and works in Udine. After completing his studies in decoration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sassari, he specialized in mosaic and dedicated himself to experimenting with new graphic technologies. His research focused on painting, initially investigating urban interiors, aseptic and emptied of human presence. In this phase, airports, stations, and passageways were photographed and reproduced clearly and unmistakably, with a meticulous control of the technique that emphasizes their coldness and transitory nature. His reflections on urban views and on human intervention in nature and landscape subsequently led him to choose to represent the moments in which nature reclaims spaces taken away by man. In his most recent works, he has taken a further step, exploiting the potential of the material to the fullest and achieving results bordering on abstraction, in which the suggestions of lateral landscapes are no longer based solely on a realistic, photographic, and reworked image, but on sensations and memory.

MARCO BETTIO

Marco Bettio (Padua, 1974) studied at the art high school in Padua and then in the Painting department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, which Emilio Vedova had left shortly before. From 2002 to 2014, he lived and worked in Milan, beginning a professional collaboration with several galleries and independent spaces and circulating his work through exhibitions and fairs. Since 2014, he has lived between Turin and Aosta. He currently collaborates with several contemporary art galleries, including Gilda Contemporary Art in Milan, Zaion Gallery in Biella, Veniero Project in Palermo, and Arionte Arte Contemporanea in Catania. Marco Bettio’s works are included in public collections (Luigi Varoli Museum in Cotignola, RA, Refugee Museum in Thessaloniki, Castello Gamba, Chatillon) and private collections (including The Bank Contemporary Art Collection Bassano del Grappa and Elenk’Art Palermo, both open to the public). Angelo Rendo, Gianluca Marziani, Gabriele Salvaterra, Rebecca Delmenico, Davide Dall’Ombra and others have written about his work.

LAURA GIARDINO

Laura Giardino was born in Milan in 1976, where she lives and works. Her pictorial research focuses on spaces, predominantly urban, as a place to investigate the life that flows within them. Ordinary environments are transformed into an elsewhere to be explored anew. The essential composition, improbable perspectives, unusual colors, and unexpected lights offer an enigmatic vision of reality. Mysterious, like existence itself. She has held numerous public and private exhibitions. Among them are the extensive solo project Aperture/Aperturas, curated by Carmelo di Gennaro, presented at the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid, and Out Of Field, curated by Marina Guida, at the PAN in Naples. Her work has been featured in leading Italian art magazines and major national and international newspapers, and monographic articles have been published in Arte, Artribune, Espoarte, AD Italia, El Pais, and El Mundo. In 2020, the monograph La Luce Oltre, with a text by Elena Pontiggia, was published in the painter’s room series by Vanillaedizioni. His works are present in the permanent collections of: Museo Michetti, VAF Stiftung and The Bank Foundation.

SARAH LEDDA

Born in Aosta in 1970, Sarah Ledda lived in Palermo until she completed her studies, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1993. Her first major solo exhibition was Nitrato d’argento, curated by Luca Beatrice (Aosta, 2000), followed by exhibitions in Paris and Brussels. Since 2003, with several exhibitions curated by Maurizio Sciaccaluga and her participation in the V Premio Cairo and the Premio Seat Pagine Bianche d’Autore, her work has entered the national circuit of contemporary art galleries and fairs, and has since held numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, in private and public spaces and collections. Her works are included in the permanent collection of Castello Gamba, the museum of modern and contemporary art of the Aosta Valley. After a few years in Turin, in 2016 she moved to Aosta, where she lives and works. Several art critics have written about his work, including Cecilia Antolini, Luca Beatrice, Martina Corgnati, Antonella Crippa, Davide Dall’Ombra, Alessandra Galletta, Maurizio Sciaccaluga and Ivan Quaroni.

NICOLA NANNINI

Born in Bologna in 1972, Nicola Nannini lives and works between Cento (FE) and Verona. Active since the mid-1990s, he has held solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including Bologna, Ferrara, Milan, Rome, Brindisi, Turin, and Reggio Emilia. Since the early 2000s, he has exhibited in The Hague, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and London; in Szekesfehervar (HU) at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna; in Bologna at the monumental complex of Santa Maria della Vita; in Paris and New York in collaboration with WP Bologna; in Verona at the Museo d’Arte di San Fermo Maggiore; and in Vicenza, with solo exhibitions. He participates annually in major art fairs (Bologna, Milan, Bari, Verona, Padua, Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, Lille, Hamburg, and London). Between 2005 and 2010 he was invited to exhibitions such as L’Inquietudine del Volto (BPL città, Lodi), Arte Italiana 1968-2007 (Palazzo Reale, Milan) curated by V. Sgarbi and Nuovi Realismi (PAC, Milan) curated by M. Sciaccaluga.

He has also been invited to the Aldo Roncaglia Prize, the Sulmona Prize, the Michetti Prize, the Celeste Prize, the Arciere Prize (S. Antioco), and the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. He has exhibited at the Durini Foundation and the Spazio Guicciardini in Milan. In 2011, he was invited to the 54th Venice Biennale, in the Emilia-Romagna pavilion at Palazzo Fava in Bologna. In 2016, an essay on the first twenty years of his work, Imperfetto Presente, edited by R. Cresti (Edizioni Pendragon), was published and presented at the Pordenone Literature Festival with a solo exhibition. That same year, his solo exhibition, Declinazioni del Paesaggio, was held at the Stadtmuseum in Chiusa (Bolzano), and in 2018, a first retrospective was held at the Palazzo dei Principi in Correggio (Reggio Emilia). He continues his collaboration with Italian galleries such as: Forni (Bologna), Area B (Milan), Il Ponte 04 (Pieve di Cento), Nino Sindoni (Asiago). In 2020 he exhibited at the Vittoriale degli Italiani with Daccapo curated by G.B. Guerri and at the PAC in Ferrara in the group exhibition Pittori Fantastici nella Valle del Po curated by C. Langone. In 2021 he was invited to the Veneto Felice exhibition at the Le Carceri Museum in Asiago for the Brazzale Prize and later at the Eremitani Museum in Padua for A Riveder le Stelle curated by B. Codogno.

Group exhibitions continued in 2022 in various Italian venues, including Andria, Brindisi, Varese, Bologna, and Verona. In 2024, he held a second retrospective at the MAC,N (Museum of Contemporary and Twentieth-Century Art) entitled Inventario d’artista (Artist’s Inventory), curated by S. Di Paolo and R. Normanno. In 2025, he opened a double solo exhibition entitled Non è ancora buio (It’s Not Dark Yet), at the CUBO and Torre Unipol venues in Bologna, curated and with a narrative text by Simona Vinci. He was also invited to the Palazzo Ricci museum in Macerata with the exhibition Fare strada together with Bartolini, Tonelli, and Luino. He has been a professor of painting at the Cignaroli Academy in Verona since 2004. Numerous publications concern him and discuss his work.

RAFFAELE SANTILLO

Raffaele Santillo (S. Maria Capua Vetere, 1966) currently lives and works in Pordenone. He attended the S. Leucio State Art Institute and the Architecture degree program at the Federico II University of Naples. His paintings are characterized by a fluid and minimal style, featuring a barely-there figuration and the presence of a liquid color that, through the superposition of multiple transparent layers, is capable of delineating unexpected and evocative situations, with particularly emotionally charged atmospheres. The overlapping, sometimes misaligned, figures inserted into panoramic landscapes manifest themselves as blurred or fleeting memories and tell of everyday life and ordinary environments. Some of his exhibitions include: 2025, Quotidiano transitorio, curated by D. Capra, Palazzo Ragazzoni, Sacile (PN); 2024, Faccio sempre debito con i sogni, curated by S. Monti, SMDOT/Arte Contemporanea, Udine; 2023, Wein & Kusnt, Weingut Kodolitsch, Leibnizt (AT); 2018, Paintings in Waiting, edited by D. Capra, General Agency 1832 of Generali Italia, Pordenone; 2016, The Summer of the Windowsill, edited by P. Bristot, Pordenone Civic Library.