Gallery Lightness21

Gallery Lightness21, named after a text on ‘Lightness’ by Italo Calvino in 1985 (lightness as weightlessness, translucency, layers, playfulness, hope, humanity, science, poetry, and different ways of seeing) is a new online gallery, founded by Clare Farrow in Sept. 2025. The gallery represents and sells original and limited edition work by artists, architects (concept sketches & models), designers (furniture, jewellery & product), ceramic artists, composers (concept drawings), photographers, video- and multi-media artists.

“There are so many precedents for Lightness in the history of art, architecture and design, from the sfumato technique of Leonardo da Vinci (applying multiple layers of thin oil-paint glazes), to the furniture of Eileen Gray, incorporating transparency, reflections and air; or the playful poetry of painter Paul Klee; and today the material experiments of Japanese architects.” C.F.

Some of those represented have featured in the exhibitions and experimental installations curated by Clare Farrow Studio. For all artists, the Gallery will explore showcasing, exhibition, sales, publishing and press opportunities, promoting individual work and connectivity.

About Clare Farrow

A former magazine editor and writer in London and Paris, Clare Farrow has interviewed and worked with many of the leading artists, architects, photographers, composers, academics and protagonists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Leo Castelli, Robert Rosenblum, Susan Sontag, Annie Leibovitz, Jean-François Lyotard, Jeff Koons, Richard Meier, Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Arvo Pärt, Robert Ryman, Anish Kapoor, Andy Goldsworthy, James Turrell, Wolfgang Laib, Daniel Libeskind, Joseph Kosuth, Zaha Hadid, Denise Scott Brown, Philip Treacy and Adolfo Domínguez.

The multidisciplinary concept for Gallery Lightness21 (the ‘21’ being the 21st century) is inspired by an essay, written in 1985, by the Italian novelist Italo Calvino (author of “Invisible Cities” and “Difficult Loves”). The text by Calvino (1923-1985), titled ‘Lightness’, was one of 6 lectures that he had been obsessively working on for a US lecture tour in the year before his unexpected death. His wife found the manuscript “in perfect order” on his writing desk, “ready to be put into his suitcase” - missing only the final text, on ‘Consistency’.

The Story of Gallery Lightness21

“Calvino’s thoughts on ‘Lightness’, which I first read in 1992 when I was working as an art and design magazine editor and writer in London, struck an extraordinary chord with me; and even though he was writing his memo in relation to literature, philosophy and poetry, I immediately connected his words and thoughts to the visual arts. At the time I was working with artists James Turrell and Wolfgang Laib, the first working with space and light, the second with sifted pollen, beeswax and milk poured on to marble. I was also working with New York artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, on an exhibition catalogue with conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, knowing that the former was dying of HIV/AIDS. It was a time when the fear of AIDS permeated the art world. The following year I would do an interview with dancer Bill T. Jones, just after he was photographed by Annie Leibovitz on top of a New York skyscraper, in images that confirm and defy gravity, and expose both fragility and strength.

“Calvino’s thoughts on Lightness were not in any way frivolous, escapist, or a denial of the weight and reality of the world, which Milan Kundera also addressed in his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1984), but are another way of seeing the world - a kind of serious play and “subtraction” of weight, as a form of resistance and hope; as Calvino writes:

‘Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don’t mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. The images of lightness that I seek should not fade away like dreams dissolved by the realities of present and future…’

“He asks: ‘But how can we hope to save ourselves in that which is most fragile?’ Taking nature and science as inspirations too, the answer, he suggests, lies in ‘the persistence of what seems most fated to perish…’

“I have often referred to this text in my writings and exhibitions, working with a variety of practitioners in art, architecture, furniture design, fashion, photography, music, film and dance, often with a focus - though not an exclusive one - on Japanese art and design; and I have felt Calvino’s words becoming more, rather than less, relevant to the times we are living in.

“This then is the concept behind Gallery Lightness21, an online gallery that aspires to also have a physical space - one that removes weight, and upholds the values of humanity.”

Clare Farrow

Image credits: Clare Farrow, 'Paris Stairs; Kengo Kuma & Associates, SunnyHills at Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo, 2013, photos by Lan-Tien Sophia Guo; Italo Calvino, 1970, photo public domain; Elly Dijkshoorn, Untitled, “Small things”, 2023, acrylic paint, pencil, textiles, paper, on birchwood; Italo Calvino, book inspiration, published by Jonathan Cape, 1992; Annie Leibovitz, Bill T. Jones, 1993, in ‘Parallel Structures: Art, Dance & Music’, Art & Design, 1993

Please view Gallery Artists pages (in development), and for more information please contact: clarefarrow21@gmail.com

Instagram @gallery_lightness21

Phone +44 7527052024