Julie Hamisky: Giardino Alchemico

Pandolfini Casa d’Aste, in collaboration with Mitterrand gallery, presents Giardino Alchemico, a solo exhibition of works by French artist Julie Hamisky, on view from April 21 to 26, 2026, during Salone del Mobile in Milan.

Bringing together a selection of sculptures and lighting works, the exhibition explores Hamisky’s singular approach to transforming ephemeral organic matter into enduring sculptural form. Through her rigorous electroplating technique — immersing flowers, leaves, and vegetal elements in a galvanic bath through which an electric current circulates — the artist preserves the most intricate veins, folds, and textures of living material at the threshold of its decay.

Giardino Alchemico unfolds as a suspended garden, where fragility is transmuted into permanence. Monumental and intimate works coexist: in La Géante (2024), a poppy enlarged to near-architectural scale asserts both botanical precision and sculptural presence; in Aqua (2024), a chandelier composed of galvanized vegetal forms, nature becomes light-bearing structure. Sculptures such as Bloom, Volcano, and the Still Life series further articulate this dialogue between ornament, object, and autonomous form.

The presentation also includes a selection of Hamisky’s jewelry, in which individual flowers and botanical fragments are preserved at their original scale. These wearable works distill the same process of transformation into intimate form, allowing the body to become a site of encounter with suspended nature. Whether monumental or miniature, each piece carries the imprint of a living specimen, captured at the moment before collapse.

Hamisky describes electroplating as a “confrontation” — a race against time that begins with the selection of a fresh flower. The process remains partly unpredictable: variations in current, duration, and heat generate subtle chromatic shifts, from deep greens and electric blues to lilac and warm copper tones. Oxidation and fire complete the transformation, leaving behind hollow metallic skins that retain every wrinkle and vein of their organic origin.

Situated at the intersection of fine art and design, Hamisky’s practice expands a traditional galvanic method through technical precision and material experimentation. In Giardino Alchemico, the garden becomes a site of alchemy — where organic matter, electricity, and fire converge to suspend time and capture the fragility of nature within metal.