For the eighth edition of Lake Como Design Festival, Memesi opens the doors of its studio at Palazzo Pantera to present Both & And, an exhibition of oil paintings by Janine Sîrbovan. On view from 13 to 20 September in Como, the show is an encounter between a branding studio and a painter, between architecture and psychological state, between what divides and what connects.
A studio that becomes an exhibition space
Memesi is a branding and communication studio housed in the historic Palazzo Pantera, steps from Como Cathedral. Its two ground-floor studios face each other across an internal courtyard: one dedicated to design, the other to encounter. This configuration reflects the Studio’s own vision: every project takes shape from the coexistence of process and relation, strategy and creativity, form and meaning. For Memesi, beauty is not decoration but a connective force — the element that binds idea to perception, thought to experience, the individual to the other.
Both & And: paintings and spaces in dialogue
Both & And is an exhibition conceived in dialogue with the tension between two rooms. Janine Sîrbovan’s paintings inhabit this architecture. Bodies become structure. Structure becomes psychological state. Figures fragment, duplicate, merge and dissolve, tracing the invisible dynamics that shape identity, memory and human relation.
The title is a refusal of either/or. Indeed, Both & And proposes coexistence as a method — for art and design, for body and structure, for the spaces that hold this exhibition together. It is an act of correspondence between the invisible structures that govern communication and those that govern the self.
Janine Sîrbovan: the artist
Janine Sîrbovan was born in Romania in 2001. She began drawing and painting at the age of eight. Over time, she developed a deep interest in anatomy, geometry and the perception of space. Between 2020 and 2023, she lived in Paris, studying art and haute couture. These experiences refined her approach to structure, composition and the construction of form. She currently lives and works on Lake Como, where she pursues oil painting as her primary medium of visual research.
Her practice explores the intersection of body, architecture and psychological space. Moving between figuration and abstraction, she investigates identity, intimacy and transformation. Colour operates as psychological environment: intense chromatic fields and suspended atmospheres construct interior worlds in which figures emerge and transform. Furthermore, through oil painting built up in successive layers, the surface becomes a place of negotiation between control and spontaneity, structure and dissolution.
Both & And and the theme of Confine
The guiding theme of Lake Como Design Festival 2026 is Confine — “border” not only as a line that divides territories, ideas and states of mind, but also as a point of encounter, a zone of tension and transformation.
Both & And inhabits this theme from within: the courtyard of Palazzo Pantera, the paintings of Janine Sîrbovan, and the logic of Memesi itself all speak the same language. The boundary as a place of meeting, not separation.
Participating in Lake Como Design Festival 2026 as a studio visit means opening a space that is usually private. As a result, what normally remains behind closed doors becomes visible, and the public is invited into the daily life of a working studio transformed by art.
Visit Both & And
Both & And is open from 13 to 20 September 2026 as part of Lake Como Design Festival 2026.
Memesi Via Rodari, 9 – 22100 Como (CO)
Monday to Friday 5–8 PM
Saturday and Sunday 10 AM–6:30 PM
Free entry
