Monica Stambrini

In the language of finance, the initial capital required to launch a new venture is known as “love capital.” It consists of three elements—Friends, Family, and Fools—which together form the foundation of any new project: as if to say that without relationships—and a touch of madness—one gets nowhere.

It is precisely this “love capital” that gives its name to Monica Stambrini’s first solo exhibition. She came to painting only a few years ago, self-taught and in perhaps the best possible way: for the pleasure and the desire to do so.

Born in California, educated in Milan, and now based in Rome, Stambrini is a filmmaker whose work spans documentaries, pornographic films, television productions, music videos, and artist portraits. No two films resemble one another; what binds them is the curiosity and acuity of her gaze. She recalls having long identified closely with her profession. She now speaks of it in the past tense—not because she has lost her desire for cinema, but because, in recent years, she has begun to paint.

“Stop filming, Mom!” one of her children said at the beginning of Chutzpah: Something About Modesty, her autobiographical documentary released in 2023.

And, in her own way, she listened. Without stepping away from cinema, she opened herself to painting: a private space of contemplation and inquiry, able to hold intuitions, ambiguities, taking time that filmmaking, by its very nature, rarely permits.

Friends & Family unfolds as carefully observed snapshots of presences—children, friends, lovers, urban spaces and domestic details, loved ones or striking strangers—forming dense, luminous portraits and scenes, charged with the energy of beginnings and vibrant with the intensity of long-awaited gestures.

“I don’t know whether the present exists—that’s why I document,” Domenico Gnoli once said. This is what these paintings seem to do: they probe bonds, linger on expressions, trace bodies, and register spaces. They do so with the elegance of one who understands that direct questions never work, and with the audacity of paths undertaken not by chance, but by necessity.

They invite a city windowsill to speak its mind about friendship, a stranded cow to show us the way to wisdom, a friend astride a floral quilt to clarify that neutrality is impossible and that lightness is always something earned.

Where does youth go when night falls and the light no longer sets the volcano ablaze? What does that ancient, bored child on the sofa know about us? And the man lying in bed, whose scent we seem to smell? And there she is again: the woman seated at a round table, her fingers sinking into a fleshlight, her clear gaze reminiscent of a girl painted by Donghi, the discreet crutch resting beside her—what confession does she have to offer, and how many promises will she demand in return?

I do not know whether Monica Stambrini’s paintings resemble her films. What is certain is that they resemble her. They are intense and ironic, attentive to others and resistant to convention. Each seems to pursue a question, to probe an intimacy. They plunge headlong into life while honoring its mystery. There is no time here for melancholy, nor fear of being misunderstood: she knows that certain solitudes are nothing other than a necessary form of enthusiasm.