Things Come in Threes
15.2 – 12.4.2026
Works by
Natela Grigalashvili, Francesco Giusti, Peter Holliday
Curated by
Steve Bisson
Opening
Friday, February 13, 9:00 pm
Orari
Sunday 4:30pm–7:30pm
Closed on April 5 (Easter)
On 13 February 2026 at 9:00 pm, the exhibition "Non c’è due senza tre" ("Things Come in Threes") opens at Lab27 in Treviso. The show originates from an investigation into portraiture and, more broadly, into figurative representation as a pretext for narrating places. From the title onward, attention is drawn to the image as a relational device: between individual and space, between body and territory, between memory and the present. This awareness is rooted in the history of Western visual arts, where figuration introduced a new way of representing the world—more realistic, more corporeal, more emotional, and more closely tied to the viewer’s experience. In the works on display by Natela Grigalashvili, Francesco Giusti, and Peter Holliday, place is never a mere backdrop; rather, it takes shape through what faces, gestures, postures, memories, and even absence evoke.
Natela Grigalashvili
Natela Grigalashvili
In the photographs of Natela Grigalashvili, drawn from the series "Book of My Mother" and "Village of the Mice", the mountainous landscape of Georgia emerges through scenes of everyday and family life, observed with an intimate and empathetic gaze. Tagveti—known as the Village of the Mice—is the village where the artist grew up and which she left at the age of sixteen to study in Tbilisi. Despite having lived in the city for over thirty years, Grigalashvili has continually returned to these places through photography, offering us a world shaped by simple gestures, deep relationships, and spaces inhabited with natural ease, where landscape is never separated from the people who live within it. Her work weaves together affection, testimony, and historical awareness, conveying the fragility of belonging. In this way, portraiture becomes an act of care and preservation, holding onto what time and transformation threaten to erase—including the relationship with her mother, Keto, marked by a distance that is not only geographical. “It took me years to understand that we are both similar in many ways. I know that now, after so many years, my mother thinks that I am an indifferent daughter as well. And I can’t tell her how much I always loved her, how I always wanted her to be happy and how I always wanted to feel that I was someone who she loved."
Francesco Giusti
Francesco Giusti
In the ongoing work of Francesco Giusti, gathered under the project "Grand Rue", portraiture becomes a means of approaching Port-au-Prince by following the course of the main artery that runs along the port and cuts through the entire city. Grand Rue is the commercial and economic center of the Haitian capital, its beating heart, where life unfolds continuously from dawn until late at night. Through the faces, bodies, and presences encountered along this road, Giusti constructs a narrative in which place emerges as lived experience—shaped by daily struggle, relationships, resistance, and dignity. Produced over several trips between 2004 and 2005, during the bicentennial of Haiti’s independence marked by widespread violence, and between 2010 and 2011, during and after the devastating earthquake, Grand Rue is a space where the human and the urban intertwine. It is also the stage for a struggle rooted in the shadows of a long history of colonial exploitation—still visible in the toponymy of neighborhoods such as Bel Air, Champ de Mars, Cité l’Eternelle, and Cité Soleil—and in subsequent U.S. imperial intervention, which left behind chronic political instability, economic fragility, and deep social divisions. Giusti’s faces are immersed in this context, and yet within them the strength, resilience, and grace of the Haitian people remain clearly visible.
Peter Holliday
In Peter Holliday, portraiture gradually dissolves until it becomes a trace within the landscape. The images on display come from a series of projects developed over recent years in various Northern European regions—extreme, sparsely populated territories where the horizon seems to swallow any expectation of defined identity. Here the human figure appears fragile and peripheral, on the verge of disappearance, absorbed by geographical spaces that exist at the limits of hospitality. For Holliday, landscape is never a neutral backdrop but an essential element of human experience—a place where meaning is continually shaped. From this awareness arises the urgency to remain accountable to the space in which the image is produced, acknowledging that even apparent emptiness is filled by our gaze and by the mythologies each of us carries within. In these photographs, portraiture thus ceases to be an act of recognition and becomes instead an experience and an inquiry: a way of questioning the relationship between individual and environment, between presence and disappearance, while keeping the meaning of what we see open and continually subject to revision.
Things Come in Threes
15.2 – 12.4.2026
Works by
Natela Grigalashvili, Francesco Giusti, Peter Holliday
Curated by
Steve Bisson
Opening
Friday, February 13, 9:00 pm
Orari
Sunday 4:30pm–7:30pm
Closed on April 5 (Easter)
On 13 February 2026 at 9:00 pm, the exhibition "Non c’è due senza tre" ("Things Come in Threes") opens at Lab27 in Treviso. The show originates from an investigation into portraiture and, more broadly, into figurative representation as a pretext for narrating places. From the title onward, attention is drawn to the image as a relational device: between individual and space, between body and territory, between memory and the present. This awareness is rooted in the history of Western visual arts, where figuration introduced a new way of representing the world—more realistic, more corporeal, more emotional, and more closely tied to the viewer’s experience. In the works on display by Natela Grigalashvili, Francesco Giusti, and Peter Holliday, place is never a mere backdrop; rather, it takes shape through what faces, gestures, postures, memories, and even absence evoke.
Natela Grigalashvili
Natela Grigalashvili
In the photographs of Natela Grigalashvili, drawn from the series "Book of My Mother" and "Village of the Mice", the mountainous landscape of Georgia emerges through scenes of everyday and family life, observed with an intimate and empathetic gaze. Tagveti—known as the Village of the Mice—is the village where the artist grew up and which she left at the age of sixteen to study in Tbilisi. Despite having lived in the city for over thirty years, Grigalashvili has continually returned to these places through photography, offering us a world shaped by simple gestures, deep relationships, and spaces inhabited with natural ease, where landscape is never separated from the people who live within it. Her work weaves together affection, testimony, and historical awareness, conveying the fragility of belonging. In this way, portraiture becomes an act of care and preservation, holding onto what time and transformation threaten to erase—including the relationship with her mother, Keto, marked by a distance that is not only geographical. “It took me years to understand that we are both similar in many ways. I know that now, after so many years, my mother thinks that I am an indifferent daughter as well. And I can’t tell her how much I always loved her, how I always wanted her to be happy and how I always wanted to feel that I was someone who she loved."
Francesco Giusti
Francesco Giusti
In the ongoing work of Francesco Giusti, gathered under the project "Grand Rue", portraiture becomes a means of approaching Port-au-Prince by following the course of the main artery that runs along the port and cuts through the entire city. Grand Rue is the commercial and economic center of the Haitian capital, its beating heart, where life unfolds continuously from dawn until late at night. Through the faces, bodies, and presences encountered along this road, Giusti constructs a narrative in which place emerges as lived experience—shaped by daily struggle, relationships, resistance, and dignity. Produced over several trips between 2004 and 2005, during the bicentennial of Haiti’s independence marked by widespread violence, and between 2010 and 2011, during and after the devastating earthquake, Grand Rue is a space where the human and the urban intertwine. It is also the stage for a struggle rooted in the shadows of a long history of colonial exploitation—still visible in the toponymy of neighborhoods such as Bel Air, Champ de Mars, Cité l’Eternelle, and Cité Soleil—and in subsequent U.S. imperial intervention, which left behind chronic political instability, economic fragility, and deep social divisions. Giusti’s faces are immersed in this context, and yet within them the strength, resilience, and grace of the Haitian people remain clearly visible.
Peter Holliday
In Peter Holliday, portraiture gradually dissolves until it becomes a trace within the landscape. The images on display come from a series of projects developed over recent years in various Northern European regions—extreme, sparsely populated territories where the horizon seems to swallow any expectation of defined identity. Here the human figure appears fragile and peripheral, on the verge of disappearance, absorbed by geographical spaces that exist at the limits of hospitality. For Holliday, landscape is never a neutral backdrop but an essential element of human experience—a place where meaning is continually shaped. From this awareness arises the urgency to remain accountable to the space in which the image is produced, acknowledging that even apparent emptiness is filled by our gaze and by the mythologies each of us carries within. In these photographs, portraiture thus ceases to be an act of recognition and becomes instead an experience and an inquiry: a way of questioning the relationship between individual and environment, between presence and disappearance, while keeping the meaning of what we see open and continually subject to revision.
