The Florence Biennale ends this weekend, after transforming the Fortezza da Basso for nine days into an immense, pulsating landscape of contemporary art and design. The fifteenth edition, titled “The Sublime Essence of Light and Darkness: Concepts of Dualism and Unity in Contemporary Art and Design,” has brought together over 550 artists and designers from 84 countries, displaying more than 1,500 works across 11,000 square meters.
A major attraction of this edition was the special section dedicated to Tim Burton, guest of honor and recipient of the Biennale’s Lifetime Achievement Award. His exhibition “The World of Tim Burton: Light and Darkness” traced the visual universe of the director through drawings, storyboards, sculptures and film stills, revealing the creative process behind his most iconic characters. Far from being a simple retrospective, it offered an intimate look at the imagination of an artist who has turned contrast, melancholy and irony into his own visual language — perfectly aligned with the Biennale’s exploration of light and shadow.
The Biennale is an extraordinary gathering of creativity, where painting, sculpture, photography, installations and design coexist in an uninterrupted sequence. Yet this abundance is both the event’s strength and its limit. The Florence Biennale offers a rare occasion to encounter artists and designers from all over the world, but the vastness of its scope often makes it difficult to perceive a true curatorial narrative — that thread which could guide the visitor through such a diverse universe. Too frequently, one moves from work to work without a sense of continuity, with the impression of being in a large art fair rather than a cohesive exhibition.
That said, the 2025 edition still delivers striking moments of beauty and reflection. One of the most successful installations is “Transitions” by Patricia Urquiola, which anchors the design section. Made from recycled fir wood and translucent polycarbonate, it creates a shifting play of light and shadow, transforming the viewer’s perception as they move around it. Urquiola’s work captures the essence of the Biennale’s theme — the dialogue between opposites — and does so through a language of materials, sustainability, and spatial awareness that feels both poetic and rigorous.
Equally compelling is the collective exhibition “Trame” (“Weaves”), dedicated to the creative and productive fabric of Tuscany. Here, the Biennale’s international scope meets local craftsmanship: ceramicists, designers and small companies present works that intertwine traditional know-how with contemporary experimentation. The result is a section that resonates with authenticity, reminding visitors that Tuscany’s identity as a creative region is built on its artisans as much as on its artists.
The design component, still a relatively young presence within the Biennale, continues to gain ground. It expands the idea of what contemporary creation means, bridging disciplines and challenging the conventional separation between art and function. Urquiola’s installation, along with the pieces shown in Trame, demonstrates that design can be as conceptually rich and emotionally engaging as fine art — and that Florence, a city historically rooted in craftsmanship, offers a natural stage for this dialogue.
Walking through the pavilions, light remains the unifying motif. Sometimes literal, as in mirrored surfaces or illuminated sculptures; other times metaphorical, evoking contrasts between clarity and opacity, presence and absence. Yet while the theme provides a framework, it often struggles to impose coherence on such an immense constellation of works. The Florence Biennale’s ambition to embrace so many artistic voices inevitably comes at the cost of a guiding narrative — but within this apparent dispersion lie discoveries that reward patient exploration.
In the end, the beauty of visiting an exhibition lies not only in the works installed on the walls, but also in what unfolds before one’s eyes — those fleeting, unplanned scenes in which art and human presence become part of the same tableau.
Among the most striking moments at the Biennale was one that blurred this boundary: Austrian sculptor Christopher Jörg Schlesinger, known for his sensuous wooden figures, was seen gently touching his own sculpture, a female silhouette carved in walnut whose soft gradations reveal the living energy of the material.
It was a gesture so natural and intimate that it would never have occurred to the viewers to attempt it themselves — an artist’s hand meeting his creation with quiet tenderness. In that simple movement, art ceased to be an object to be observed and became, once again, a living connection between matter, emotion and the human touch.
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Eirini Lavrentiadou is an actress and singer, born in Thessaloniki in 1992. She lives in Florence, where she trained at the city’s Theatre Academy and the Fiesole School of Music. She has performed in classical Greek and European plays, worked with international directors and companies, and appeared in concerts ranging from opera to jazz. She contributes to Florence Daily News as a writer.
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