Theater of Delight is the first solo exhibition in Italy by Sal Salandra, a self-taught artist based in East Hampton, New York, internationally known for his thread paintings depicting joyful, erotic scenes between queer men and other expressions of same-sex desire. This is the third chapter of Camera Doppia, following exhibitions featuring photographic works by Bart Julius Peters in dialogue with Massimo Faion, and drawings by Wenjie Ding with exhibition design by Giovanni De Francesco. For Salandra’s exhibition, Milan-based fashion and costume designer Fabio Zambernardi creates a site-specific display inspired by biographical elements from the artist’s life—particularly the period when Salandra was running a hair salon in New York City. At the center of this theatrical stage, Zambernardi constructs an environment in which the artist’s sexual imagery mingles with the vernacular and the trivialities of everyday life. Yet this setting is far from literal: suggestive rather than indexical, it resists banality and leaves space for the imagination. The scenography is evocative, composed of fragments that hint at different “stations” in a life or fantasy, without ever fully resolving into a fixed narrative. The exhibition features ten paintings spanning from 1995 to 2025, including four drawings that often serve as starting points for the artist’s thread paintings. For this occasion, Salandra has created a new work inspired by The Baptism of Christ, an oil-on-panel painting completed around 1475 in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio and generally attributed to both Verrocchio and his pupil Leonardo da Vinci. Salandra’s tribute to this canonical religious motif is deliberately irreverent: he transforms the scene into a queer, pagan ritual—provocative yet humorous—reframing sacred iconography through the lens of erotic pleasure. Theater of Delight is organized in collaboration with Richard Villani, creative producer and Creative Director of the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles.
In the Eyes of a Lover, We Are Always Beautiful is Wenjie Ding’s first solo exhibition in Italy. Ding’s portrayals of hyper-masculinized male figures bridge the tradition of Chinese erotic drawings with a distinctly Western, Tom of Finland–esque aesthetic. In a postcolonial context, his drawings subtly address the Western gaze that has historically exoticized and objectified Asian bodies. His muscled, sensuous models—countryside men transformed into objects of desire—embody a cross-cultural exchange that redefines the gaze on male (gay) sexuality. Through his work, Ding explores the tension between East and West, blending a globalized representation of gay sexual identity with the sensibilities and visual references of his cultural heritage.
These works immerse the viewer in a world where humor intertwines with tender, at times dreamlike, homoeroticism, creating a vivid dialogue between fantasy and the rural realities of China, where the artist lives and draws inspiration for his models. Though often depicting scenes that might be perceived as pornographic, Ding’s drawings transcend mere eroticism, instead portraying moments of connection, brotherhood, and complicity.
The exhibition brings together 16 drawings made between 2015 and 2024, a body of work characterized by a playful yet tender engagement with gay porn iconography—bikers, cowboys, after-gym sweat, and other archetypal figures—rendered with affectionate self-awareness. These figures, often celebrated for their virility, are recontextualized in Ding’s work not as symbols of Western-centric tropes, but as conduits for a broader, more inclusive narrative of masculinity, intimacy, and love.
