Solo exhibition
curated by Francesca Bianucci and Chiara Cinelli
INAUGURATION
Thursday 12 February 2026
6.30 p.m.
Milan – Spazio HUS
Via San Fermo, 19
12 February – 12 March 2026
free entrance
Milan, 26.01.2026 – From February 12 to March 12, 2026, Spazio HUS in Milan will host Claudio Onorato ‘s solo exhibition entitled ‘Fantastic Architectures‘, which will be inaugurated on Thursday 12 February in the presence of the artist.
Like an illusionist of yesteryear, Claudio Onorato transforms simple sheets of black cardboard into visionary architectures, carved worlds in which air and light become narrative matter. Through skilful use of cut-outs, the artist brings complex and poetic scenarios to life, revealing the fragile and sometimes tragic beauty of the human condition.
In Fantastic Architectures, the visitor is invited to enter a suspended dimension, where past and future overlap, and the real merges with the imaginary. Onorato’s work moves with irony and lightness between art, architecture and design, constructing an experiential place where it is natural to lose oneself and find oneself again. Paper becomes iron, iron becomes paper again: a continuous process of dematerialisation and materialisation, similar to an alchemic ritual.
In the exhibition, a selection of Scraps dialogues with the vegetal architectures of the Trees of Life and the colourful Lightsboxes, composing a path through imaginary microcosms populated by human, animal and vegetable figures in a narrative scenario teeming with life.
“I realise more and more that Architecture is the beating heart of my work. – notes the artist – I say this with joy and equally with a veil of disquiet, sometimes with the fear that I have strayed a little too far from the world of the living. For architecture, I have betrayed the human body, the undisputed model of classical sculpture. I design and build architecture with immense and boundless pleasure. Sometimes even before I know the content. It is no coincidence that I am an architect, the son of an architect. I study my architecture in plan, frontally, from the side, with a bird’s eye perspective or with a simple axonometry, always in search of the best shot, as Tim Burton or Wes Anderson would do in one of their films.
Cities, Art Deco skyscrapers, Renaissance palaces, neighbourhoods, squares, rooms, everything becomes a theatrical setting, a small corner of our extratemporal universe, where imagination becomes architecture and architecture becomes storytelling”.
Claudio Onorato
Claudio Onorato is known for his Ritagli monocromi, microcosms of images engraved on large sheets of black cardboard using a simple cutter. Works that, inspired by everyday life and real-life news events, take the viewer on a journey suspended between fable, play, politics and the social dimension. He has exhibited in numerous private venues – including Galleria Anfiteatro Arte (Milan and Padua), Galleria Cortina (Milan), Onishi Gallery (New York), Kasia Kai Art Projects Gallery (Chicago), Camden Art Gallery (London) – and institutional venues in Italy and abroad, including Palazzo della Triennale, Palazzo della Permanente, Arengario (Milan), Centrale dell’Acqua (Milan), Galleria Cavour (Padua), Palazzo Fogazzaro (Schio), as well as Barcelona, Locarno, Berlin, London, Paris, Chicago, New York and Shizuoka. His works are on permanent display at the Centrale dell’Acqua in Milan. Inside Fabbrica Orobia 15, a historic Milanese industrial area from the 1920s, and later in his studio in Via Malaga 4, he created My Gallery, a space dedicated to art and culture, periodically open to the public. www. claudioonorato.com
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Spazio HUS – Spazio HUS presents itself as a place where different experiences and artistic paths can meet and contaminate each other, through a rich programme of exhibitions by designers, artists, photographers and craftsmen from the Italian and international scene. Spazio HUS, whose name originates from the Danish word “HUS” meaning “house”, is located in an evocative place with original period interiors that is also the headquarters of HUS Milano, a creative and inspirational workshop for architects, interior decorators, designers and artists in general.
