dual vision • trieste
From December 6, 2025, to January 2, 2026, Piazza Cavana in Trieste will host Trieste Dual Vision, a contemporary art exhibition curated by Paola Dongu and Piermario Fattor, in collaboration with Omnium Art Department. The official opening will take place on December 6 at 4:30 PM, with the artists and curators present, offering a rare and intense dialogue between Volker Merkle’s structural and luminous research and Vittorio Menditto’s gestural and introspective energy.
This is not an exhibition focused on spectacle, but on depth; it does not aim to provoke, but to resonate. It presents a journey where two distinct artistic languages intertwine, expanding perception and inviting viewers to experience color, matter and emotion in a new way.
An engineer, designer, and painter, Volker Merkle brings to Trieste works crafted from concrete, wood, and steel, materials transformed into surfaces that capture light and suggest movement through pure pigments and compositions that balance rigor with sensitivity.
His concrete panels defy static expectations, revealing internal tensions, subtle equilibria and surprising vitality. For Merkle, matter does not confine: it opens up. His sculptural practice complements his painting, combining wood and steel: two opposing materials that together create pieces of strong visual and symbolic balance. His sculptures and design objects embody the tension between nature and technology, solidity and lightness, warmth and precision.
Alongside Merkle, Vittorio Menditto introduces a poetic and profoundly human force. A tetraplegic artist, he paints using a headpiece that holds the brush, a gesture that transforms limitation into propulsive energy. His oil paintings are abstract compositions where color and gesture merge in a subtle balance between impulse and introspection. Each work embodies resistance, freedom and presence.
The winter light and the identity of this border city amplify the rhythm of the exhibition. Piazza Cavana becomes a contemporary crossroads, where the two artistic voices reflect and complement each other, creating an atmosphere of intensity, contrast and emotional depth. Trieste Dual Vision opens a visual and mental space where structure and fluidity, precision and emotional impulse, matter and color coexist in harmony while retaining their distinct voices.
The exhibition will be open to the public from December 6, 2025, to January 2, 2026.