SAL SALANDRA with FABIO ZAMBERNARDI “Theater of Delight”

Opening: Friday 19th September | 6:30p

In the tradition of past exhibitions at Camera Doppia, they’ve designed a special poster that reflects Sal’s practice, from the initial drawings to the final stitchings, and highlights the unique collaboration with Fabio for this occasion. Conceived as a poster on one side and a leaflet on the other, it includes a poetic text that captures thier collective feelings while exploring Sal’s Queer and erotic universe.

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.

For this 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.

SAL SALANDRA The Baptism of Christ, 2025

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.

Open by appointment only