LIS10 Gallery is pleased to present Parto Artifex: the contemporary life of historical forms, a two-men show by Veronica Smirnoff and Barry X Ball, opening on 13 June 2026 in Arezzo.
The exhibition is structured around the notion of ‘parto’, gestational completion - the moment in which an artwork passes fully from formation into realised presence. This is not merely the end of a process, but the point at which a work acquires independence from its making, taking form as an independent entity, capable of sustaining its own existence. Artistic practice is in many ways a sequence of stages, each one marking the transition from latent formation to articulated form.
For Veronica Smirnoff, this condition is inseparable from questions of vision, construction and the ephemeral nature of perception. In her most recent series of paintings, she draws upon the experiences of womanhood, folklore, iconography and the legacy of Piero della Francesca’s work, where pictorial space is never neutral but governed by systems and religious symbols, with minimal distortion of the natural, which reveal mystical meanings. This exploration becomes even more apt as Lis10 gallery is in close proximity to Piero’s famous Arezzo cycle frescoes.
Smirnoff’s interest lies in negotiations between the visible and what remains beyond sight. Using the ancient technique of egg tempera on wood, she builds images through gradual accretion, where clarity is never separated from uncertainty. The viewer is not positioned outside the work but drawn into its completion, as perception becomes part of the image’s unfolding logic, conditioned by seeing. The show title harks back to Piero della Francesca’s Madonna del Parto. This celebrated image presents not as a narrative, but rather, a suspended state: a moment in which form is neither fully present nor absent, but held in a condition of becoming. It is a meditation on emergence itself, the coming on the scene where visibility is always delayed and meaning is constituted through constraint and withholding, a scent of something coming closer.
Barry X Ball’s sculptural practice similarly engages historical form through processes of translation and transformation. Using advanced digital scanning, virtual modelling and computer-controlled carving alongside meticulous hand finishing, he reconstructs canonical sculptures in marble and alabaster. These works are not reproductions but rearticulations, in which inherited forms are displaced into a contemporary condition of material precision and altered identity. Italy occupies a significant position within his practice, both as a continuous reference to Renaissance and Baroque sculpture with history at play. He has previously shown work in Arezzo at Casa Vasari, a site deeply embedded in the city’s artistic heritage, establishing a direct and enduring connection with the city. His return to Arezzo reactivates this dialogue, situating his work once again within a context, historically defined by questions of proportion, visual intelligence and sculptural order.
Together, Smirnoff and Ball articulate distinct but converging approaches to the endurance of historical forms. Their practices suggest that continuity is never a matter of preservation alone, but of transformation where what persists does so through repeated acts of reinterpretation and appropriation of pictorial languages.
The exhibition proposes Artifex as an artistic making, a sequence of completed states, in which form emerges, balances and enters the world as an independent entity.
Veronica Smirnoff is a British artist of Russian origin, born in Moscow in 1979 and based inLondra. Lavora principalmente con la tempera all'uovo su legno, traendo ispirazione dalle tradizioni iconografiche e dai primi sistemi pittorici. Diplomata alla Slade School of Fine Art e alla Royal Academy Schools, ha esposto a livello internazionale in Europa e negli Stati Uniti.
Barry X Ball is an American sculptor, born in Pasadena in 1955 and based in New York. His work redefines figurative sculpture through the integration of advanced digital processes and traditional hand craftsmanship. His works are held in major international collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hammer Museum and the Maramotti Collection.
On the occasion of the exhibition, LIS10 Gallery will present the accompanying catalogue, published by Maretti Manfredi Edizioni and featuring essays by Darren Jones, Fabio Migliorati, and Rostislav Novikov. Conceived as an integral extension of the project, the publication further examines the dialogue between historical legacy and contemporary artistic practice at the heart of Parto Artifex.