dialogue
Maria Valeria Biondo | Gallerist
August 2025
5 min read
Maria Valeria Biondo holds DES BAINS as a space for refusal and reinvention, where art moves at its own pace, favouring friction, marginality, and poetic disobedience. Its programme emerges organically from conversations, correspondence, and studio encounters, rather than being imposed top-down. Exhibitions often grow slowly from phrases, images, or long-term research threads.
For emerging artists, the gallery prioritises time, trust, and space for uncertainty. Beyond exhibitions, it offers feedback on writing, early idea development, and meaningful connections with curators, writers, and institutions. The emphasis is on providing room for experimentation without the pressure for immediate clarity. Reflecting on over 20 shows since 2021, Biondo has learned that the pace of art differs from the pace of the art world. The most valuable collaborations come from resisting urgency and allowing depth to unfold over time.
Looking ahead, Biondo envisions DES BAINS retaining its porosity, openness to contradiction, and willingness to reinvent itself, always leaving room for refusal and risk-taking.
Photo of Maria Valeria Biondo. Courtesy of Maria Valeria Biondo.
How would you articulate the ethos and purpose of DES BAINS' programme?
“The programme isn't built to reassure or reflect trends. It favours frictions: between mediums, between meaning and refusal, between the visible and the unverifiable. What drives it isn't coherence but a kind of fidelity to the marginal, the errant, the poetically disobedient.”
Installation View: Lewis Davidson, Electric Fall, 2025. DES BAINS, London. Image courtesy of DES BAINS and the Artist.
Does your exhibition calendar primarily stem from conceptual research or respond to artists' urgencies? Where does your programming originate?
“From correspondence, mostly. Conversations, drafts, images sent at odd hours. Sometimes a show begins with a phrase in a studio visit. Other times, it grows out of a longer trajectory-threads I've been following through research or writing. Programming isn't imposed from above; it accumulates. Slowly, sometimes stubbornly.”
Installation View: Lara Smithson, Cause Unknown, 2025. DES BAINS, London. Image by Studio Adamson.
What systems or support do you believe emerging artists most require today, and how does your gallery endeavour to provide these beyond exhibition opportunities?
“Time, trust, and a certain tolerance for uncertainty. DES BAINS offers more than just shows-we give feedback on writing, help shape ideas in their early stages, connect artists with curators, writers, and institutions that can engage them on their own terms. Often the most useful thing we provide is space: to experiment, and to not have everything make sense too quickly.”
Installation View: Charlie Burtenshaw, Moon Palace, 2025. DES BAINS, London. Image courtesy of DES BAINS and the Artist.
DES BAINS has hosted over 20 shows since December 2021, congratulations. What has been your most significant learning as a gallerist as you approach your fourth anniversary?
“That the pace of the art world is rarely the pace of art. The most meaningful collaborations have come from resisting urgency-allowing things to unfold over time, without forcing clarity. I've learned that attention is fleeting, but that doesn't mean depth has to be.“
Installation View: Angela Maasalu, Taking Courage, 2025. DES BAINS and Lungley gallery, London. Image by Reliant Imaging.
Looking ahead 10 years, what elements of DES BAINS do you hope remain consistent?
“Its porosity. I hope the gallery stays open to contradiction, slowness, reinvention. That it never becomes too sure of itself. I want DES BAINS to remain a place where work can take risks, and where refusal is still on the table.”
Lara Smithson, Cause Unknown, 2025. DES BAINS, London.
The gallery currently represents three outstanding artists: Bryan Giuseppi Rodriguez Cambana, Lucia Farrow, and Francesco Pacelli. Is there anything planned we should anticipate from these artists?
“Each of them is working on new projects that reflect deeper shifts in their practice. Giuseppi is focusing on his films. Lucia is developing a long-form installation that will unfold across multiple spaces. Francesco returns for his second solo show with us this winter, advancing his sculptural language with even more delicacy and tension. There's much to come-quietly, and with intention.”
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