Barbati Gallery operated from 2022 to 2026 on the ground floor of Palazzo Lezze, a historic building overlooking Campo Santo Stefano, in the Sestiere of San Marco. The gallery was founded by Michele Barbati after years of work at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles.

The group exhibition An Arena arose from a collaboration with Nonaka-Hill, a gallery based in Los Angeles and Kyoto specialising in Japanese art.

The artists featured included Ryoko Aoki, Miho Dohi, Kentaro Kawabata, Hiroshi Sugito, Daisuke Yokota, Yoichi Ohira, Sam Gilliam, Kenneth Noland and Sterling Ruby.

The works ranged across ceramics, porcelain, glass, sculpture, installation, painting, drawing and photography.

The conceptual core of the exhibition was the encounter between the Western compositional tradition, founded on Renaissance perspective, and the Japanese notion of "ma", the active void at the centre of the image.

The rooms of the Venetian palazzo, left recognisable, served as neutral ground for this confrontation between matter, chance and control.