LABS Contemporary Art is pleased to present the solo exhibition by Genuardi/Ruta (Antonella Genuardi and Leonardo Ruta), titled Il più bel Deserto del Mondo (The Most Beautiful Desert in the World), curated by Giuliana Benassi.
On view from 3 October to 21 November, 2026.
Long defined by an artistic inquiry into the physical and symbolic intersection of space and light, the duo takes the exhibition site itself as a starting point for this show, aiming to convey an imaginative landscape by responding to the gallery’s former function: a single-nave church, traces of which remain in the sacristy. With this perspective, the exhibition is conceived as a garment for the space, revealing a potential earthly sacredness that is metaphorically evoked by the resilient image of a flower blooming in the desert, a miracle of beauty that radiates strength and perseverance. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Philippe Diolé’s “Le plus beau Désert du Monde”, inviting us to perceive the ignition of the darkness within a tiny point of light.
Drawing on this inspiration, the exhibition takes the form of a unified installation conceived by the duo as an exploratory journey for the visitor, which chosen shapes, colors, and materials serve as “compasses,” collectively evoking an absolute dimension where space, time, and their reflected symbolic dynamics are reconfigured.
Genuardi/Ruta is an artistic duo formed by Antonella Genuardi and Leonardo Ruta in 2014 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo. The geometries the duo employs do not exist for their own sake; they are always the result of a reflection on light, on the volumes it intercepts and the cuts it defines. Moreover, this reflection does not stem from a technical-analytical approach. Rather, it is the expression of a historical-sentimental sensibility, rooted in emotions linked to a distant reservoir of memory. We might view their forms as pages from a journal, a singular narrative around the unexplainable and ever-renewing relationship between the natural power of light and an equally powerful, purely human construct: architectural space. The unpredictable formal relationships that emerge between these two forces constitute the very core of their work.
Always characterised by a stylistic research rooted in the physical and symbolic encounter between space and light, in this exhibition the duo takes the exhibition site as its starting point, transforming it into an imaginary landscape that evokes the gallery’s previous function as a single-nave church, traces of which remain in the sacristy.
