Each stroke is an instant of held breath, a mark that does not merely represent nature, but enters into it. The artist explores concepts such as ma (the charged space between things) and wabi-sabi (the serene dignity of imperfection), not as fixed symbols but as living ideas. Her “abstract calligraphy” arises from botanical intuition and from a will to invite slowness, intimacy, and contemplation, creating pictorial spaces that are at once matter and silence.

Fairmont Tokyo: gesture on an architectural scale

Alicia Gimeno’s relationship with Japanese aesthetics reached a culminating point with her participation in the Fairmont Tokyo project, curated by Interculture Art. In this intervention, her gesture unfolded on a grand scale, transcending the canvas to integrate into architectural and decorative elements of the hotel.

Among the most notable works are large plaster panels, four meters in height, inspired by traditional Japanese interior doors. These surfaces, free from the constraints of the stretcher, allowed the artist to develop broad, organic gestures capable of enveloping the viewer in an almost immersive experience. The project also included unique pieces, such as a ten-meter kitchen hood in engraved bronze, and glass dividers in common areas, whose interplay with light creates a delicate game of opacity.

For the artist, traversing these elements is comparable to walking through a forest: a space where calm becomes intense and connection with the essential comes alive. It was also an opportunity to work alongside artisans and professionals from diverse crafts, opening a fertile dialogue between art and craftsmanship.

Calligraphy and the written word: a future project

Alicia Gimeno’s interest in calligraphy is not limited to its visual translation: it also extends to the written word as a creative territory. In her studies with Dr. Hsiao Lin Liu, a Fine Arts scholar and expert in cursive calligraphy, she discovered the depth of a gesture that transcends the mechanical and approaches the spiritual—an inspiration both for informalist painters and for her own practice.

From these encounters emerged the idea of an aesthetic and essayistic book that gathers conversations, reflections, and visual material, establishing a bridge between what the artist seeks to learn and what her teacher wishes to transmit. Although the project does not yet have a publication date, for Gimeno it represents a more intimate and introspective exploration, where word and image converge to continue questioning the mystery of the trace.

Alicia Gimeno

Alicia Gimeno was born into a family of engineers, where the technical understanding of space was a given. However, since childhood, she cultivated a fascination with abstraction, resignifying rigidity as a canvas for creative play and emotional freedom.

Trained in graphic design during her stay in Mexico, Gimeno absorbed the expressiveness of Eastern calligraphy and the profound language of the hand-drawn line, understanding the act of writing beyond language—as a form of pure and spiritual expression.

Since 2021, her work has evolved towards a visual poetry that summons both the vegetal and the abstract: lines that emerge like roots, like intimate pathways linking form and origin, gesture and existence.

Visual language and creative philosophy
In her artistic practice, Gimeno begins with an aesthetic utopia: to strip forms of everything they are not in essence, so they may speak for themselves. White and black become her chromatic vocabulary, polarities that offer clarity to that intimate dialogue with line and space.

Her canvases are also material surfaces—textiles, fabrics, contexts—where the visual gesture flourishes, where space and matter intertwine in an organic dance.
Alicia Gimeno inhabits the space where the elegance of abstraction and the wisdom of origins coexist. Each line, each form, emerges from a root and strips itself of words to exist as gesture. In her work, black on white is not contrast: it is whisper, root, a trace that emerges from silence.

It is an art that recognizes that every form is inscribed in a context—in matter, in memory, in air—and, at the same time, that only when we speak from essence can we truly hear what forms wish to say.

Sources: Alicia Gimeno y Fairmont Tokio.

In the baroque heart of Noto, in southern Sicily, there rises a pink house, luminous and serene, where painting merges with music and the scent of bougainvillea. This is where Júlia Martins Miranda lives and works, a Brazilian artist who has found, in the depth of time and the Mediterranean light, a new place to belong. In her house-studio, a former monastery restored with patience, love, and local hands, Júlia has shaped an intimate and radiant universe that is at once a refuge, a workshop, and a poetic manifesto.

Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Júlia trained as a photographer and musician before surrendering to painting with passion. The visual rhythm of her canvases reveals this fusion: there is cadence, harmony, and deep silence in them. Her training took her through cities such as São Paulo, Milan, and New York, where she absorbed new perspectives and languages, yet never lost touch with the pulse of her homeland, which persists in her work like a quiet melody. In her art, the Brazilian spirit is not a theme, but an echo, an atmosphere, a memory filtered through distance.

Pindorama: a series born of memory, nostalgia, and desire

Her latest series of paintings is titled Pindorama, the Tupi-Guarani word meaning “land of the palm trees”, the ancestral name of Brazil before colonisation. In these works, Júlia paints from memory, nostalgia, and desire. Her palette bursts with warm tones, orange, red, yellow, that seem to ripen on the canvas, while organic forms float like islands in an emotional geography. Each painting is an intimate map of her childhood, a scene from an invented paradise where the poetry of Adélia Prado, the music of Tom Jobim, and the sensuality of the tropics converge.

“Painting is a way of returning,” says the artist. Not to a specific place, but to a slower state of consciousness, one that is closer to what is essential. Pindorama does not depict the jungle or folklore, but an inner forest, where feelings of belonging, uprootedness, and reconciliation bloom.

Her house studio, a restored monastery

The story of this series cannot be separated from the place where it was created. Júlia’s home is a former monastery in Noto’s historic centre, which she restored alongside her couple, designer Mimmo Calcagno, with the collaboration of local artisans. Respect for the soul of the building guided every decision: they preserved the irregular walls, high ceilings, and stone floors, removing modern partitions to allow the light to enter like an honoured guest.

The furnishings, minimal and essential, were crafted to measure by local carpenters, reflecting a dialogue between tradition and contemporary simplicity. The kitchen opens onto a patio lush with tropical vegetation. The shower, without walls or doors, becomes a creative ritual: “It’s where I think through my paintings, where everything begins,” the artist confesses. In this home, every corner and every object is not part of a set, but part of an emotional atmosphere.

Sicily: an island where time slows down

The choice of Sicily was no coincidence. On the island, Júlia found the slow time and constant light that her work requires. Life here unfolds at a gentler pace, as if each gesture could be contemplated before it happens. That slowness is also a form of resistance, against digital haste, urban noise, and emotional disconnection. Her house studio stands as a manifesto against the speed of contemporary life.

During the summer, Júlia opens her doors to share her work and hosts evenings of conversation, live music, and local cuisine, which she calls “tropical soirées.” Her exhibitions, like the one held at Iuta Farm, an artistic retreat nestled among olive trees and the sea, embody her way of inhabiting art through intimacy.

In Júlia Martins Miranda, the artist and the emotional architect converge. Her home is not a backdrop, but an extension of her painting. Her works do not depict landscapes, they create them. Every gesture, every colour, every texture constructs an enveloping atmosphere that invites reflection, celebration, and contemplation. Rarely is the fusion between life and work, between space and thought, so clearly expressed.

In Noto, the brazilian artist has built a tropical heart, a place that does not belong to a specific time, but to a sensibility, one that reminds us, like her work, that it is still possible to inhabit the world with beauty, roots and soul.

Source: Júlia Martins Miranda.
Photographs provided by Júlia Martins Miranda.

She studied Fine Arts at university, where she first encountered ceramics. But it wasn’t until nine years ago that she began experimenting, first with porcelain, then with clay, to create organic sculptures, strangely beautiful, as if they had emerged directly from the earth. “I discovered that the collective Gasworks NYC had its studio right across the street from my home, so I joined. It’s wonderful to be part of a creative community,” she explains.

Tania Whalen has found her true voice in clay: a wordless voice that speaks through stillness. Her work doesn’t seek perfection, but truth. “My work celebrates the natural identity of clay, highlighting its textures and organic forms through gesture—just as wind, water and sand shape the earth, my surfaces convey movement and depth. I’m inspired by nature, architecture, art and music, and I collect notes on striking everyday silhouettes to reimagine them in clay,” says Tania.

More than objects, her pieces are miniature landscapes, emotional topographies. There is something ritual, almost sacred, in them. Tania works not only with clay, but with time: the time of the wheel, the drying, the fire. “Ceramics forces me to listen,” she once said in an interview. To listen to internal rhythms, to fertile accidents, to the resistance of matter.

Her creative philosophy rejects the haste of the market and aligns with a notion of beauty deeply rooted in sustainability, in respect for artisanal processes, and in a way of life that is mindful and attentive. In a world inclined towards speed and surface, her work is an act of quiet resistance.

At Exágono, we celebrate artists who create with purpose—who offer visual and tactile sanctuaries, and who remind us of the enduring value of the handmade. Tania Whalen is, without doubt, one of these essential creators. Her pieces are not just ceramics: they are gestures suspended in time, fragments of an eternal dialogue between humankind and the earth.

Tania Whalen
gtaniawhalen@gmail.com
www.taniawhalenceramics.com
@taniawhalenceramics

For me, creating is more about seeking satisfaction through curiosity than channelling passion. I suppose it’s because I discovered sculpture through self-taught exploration. I was born in a rural environment, artistically poor but rich in manual activity. With one grandfather a tailor, the other a shoemaker, and a father with a gift for working stone, it would have made sense for me to follow the path of craft.

But that wasn’t the case. And although today I make my own belts, wallets, tool holsters, wooden kitchen utensils and even some of my furniture, allowing myself to do something that “serves no purpose” has been a journey—a break from everything I was taught, a battle against fear, a cry of rebellion born of a voiceless despair.

That’s why putting words to this part of my life, the one tied to sculpture, is a real challenge—because it means translating something I can’t express in any other way. Creating isn’t a gratuitous or altruistic act; it comes at the cost of exposing yourself, of stripping away a part of who you are and making it public. In the end, I believe art is a way to speak about secrets, about those things we can’t—or won’t—express otherwise.

Still, my path didn’t run entirely through the arts. I studied Hispanic Philology, but it bored me in the first year, so I switched to Social Work, which allowed me to discover another side of myself. The world of helping relationships also forms a deep part of who I am. Today I run a care centre for people with mental illness. Ironically, this is where I work with words—surrounded by secrets, by revelations that can sometimes only be voiced through “madness.”

Yet something always lies in wait, drawing me back to sculpture, to creation. I’m an artistic material-gatherer, wherever I go. Once, I dragged for several kilometres through the Madrid mountains a twisted, rusted iron beam from a demolition site. I have no idea how it ended up there, but among the rubble, weighing over 40 kilos, I simply couldn’t resist claiming that treasure—offered, I like to think, by the god Apollo himself.

I need my hands to create, far from the gaze of serious or normative scrutiny. I stay grounded in the humility of someone who feels uncomfortable calling himself an artist, teetering like a tightrope walker on the edge of yes-but-no, unwilling to let go of the permanent unease born of curiosity—that blessed and cursed curiosity.

Wood, iron and stone

These are the three main elements in my work. The materials I’ve always had close at hand. Wood allows me everything, iron forbids me everything, and stone forgives me nothing. And in that constant material conversation, the pleasure of my artistic play emerges.

Recycling as a new beginning

Most of my work is made from materials that already carry a message—traces of a previous life. Their contribution to the piece is meaningful in and of itself. Often, each part is already a whole within another whole. I’m drawn to the textures shaped by time: the twists, the rust, the wear. And paradoxically, I shy away from works that feel temporally fragile. I seek balance between delicacy and strength, between airiness and groundedness.

Constant inconstancy

I find it increasingly boring to work in the same line or with the same materials. I dream of large-scale iron and stone sculptures for outdoor spaces that I’ve never made—with the same joy I feel when assembling a small composition of old woods on the table in my storage room, or stitching a piece of leather to hang as a second skin on the wall. I cultivate my ability to be surprised and to feel wonder—rigorously and persistently—so that I don’t consider life lost before it ends, or full before it’s truly lived.

Inspiration

It comes from everything I see, read, talk about, or dream. From admiration for the work of others—which doesn’t have to be artistic. From architecture—especially the scaffolding and structures formed during construction, even more so in older buildings. Sometimes I’m infected by someone else’s enthusiasm, and sometimes I just let myself feel because something—somehow—calls my attention and makes me vibrate.

Aspiration

I aspire to well-earned enjoyment, to the kind of memory that allows me to create work grounded in the present. To share what I make, and to never lose respectful curiosity.

Javier Beiro

Gallego (A Estrada, Pontevedra 1972) lives in San Fernando de Henares (Madrid).

Inspired by the constant motion of the Mediterranean, the work takes its name from the famous Heraclitean aphorism “everything flows,” and reflects on impermanence and transformation. Suspended or gently resting on fine supports, the pieces float like seaweed in an invisible current. Light, conceived as an active part of the installation, emanates from within or filters through the delicate bodies of the works, composing a mutable landscape that reveals the essence of change—one that silently draws us toward the natural.

If Panta Rei speaks of flow, the series Shadow and poems, first exhibited in Milan in 2024 and now on view at Il·lacions Gallery in Barcelona, invites us to pause. This collection of luminous sculptures was conceived as a tribute to Junichiro Tanizaki and his In Praise of Shadows, exploring the warmth of dim light as a contemplative, intimate, almost sacred space. Here, form retreats into concentric structures that evoke drums of shadow.

Sculptural lamps and objects with a totemic presence are born from the gesture of layering hat brims: a technique that carries with it the memory of millinery, yet frees it from its function. These pieces, crafted from natural materials, cast shadows that gently paint the walls. Their placement on stone platforms adds an echo of ritual, of introspection. Everything here becomes pause and density. More than lamps, they are suspended poems—an invitation to inhabit the subtle.

Exhibition: Panta Rei
Artists: Eliurpi. Eli Urpí and Nacho Umpiérrez
Dates: April 7–13, 2025
Venue: Cavallerizze, Via Olona 4, Milan.
Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci

Exhibition: Shadow and poems
Artists: Eliurpi. Eli Urpí and Nacho Umpiérrez
Dates: Milan, 2024. Currently in Barcelona
Venue: Il·lacions Gallery. La Rambla 130. Barcelona

Eliurpi, a four-handed biography

Eli Urpí (El Papiolet, 1985) and Nacho Umpiérrez (Colonia del Sacramento, 1983) began over a decade ago crafting silk headpieces. By chance—or perhaps fate—they came across the antique hat molds of Galician milliner María Mazás. Since then, they have reinterpreted classical millinery with a contemporary and deeply personal gaze. Their work, both exquisite and experimental, was sold at Browns (London) and Harrods, but also behind closed doors, in their showroom in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. They still welcome guests there today, in appointments that feel more like intimate encounters.

Yet their creative restlessness soon led them to blur the lines between fashion, art, and design. “We wanted the hat to stop being a functional object and become a sculpture,” says Urpí, adding: “Our greatest influence in textile art has been Aurèlia Muñoz.” That need for evolution first crystallized into hybrid pieces—hand-painted wide-brimmed hats, abstract canvases that deconstructed the hat’s form. Then came furniture—stools, tables, lighting—and more recently, textile sculpture. Each step, though natural, has also been a statement of intent: no gallery, no calendar, no concessions.

In just a few years, their works have been shown in Seoul (Cheongju Craft Biennale), Madrid (Art U Ready), Milan (Palazzo Litta and Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci), Miami (Design Miami), and Barcelona (Escat and Il·lacions). Their pieces share space with Balenciaga hats in the Matter Matters exhibition at Disseny Hub Barcelona 2025 and they have received the Saco Award for Contemporary Craft at Madrid Craft Week, garnering international attention.

In Panta Rei, they draw inspiration from the continuous movement of the Mediterranean—and if anything defines Eliurpi, it is this desire to flow, to move freely through a language of their own that blends craft, intuition, and visual poetry. Today, with no fixed gallery and no external impositions, Eliurpi flows. And as in their work, so too in their path: the essence of order is change. A change that does not distance them from their artisanal roots, but transforms them into something else: a way of thinking that is material, silent, and deeply sensitive.

Source: Eliurpi