The exhibition “Perpetuate the Dreams” at 193 Gallery in Venice explored the pictorial language of the New Zealand artist Rob Tucker through neat shapes, vivid colours and a look at the 20th century.
Founded in Paris in 2018 by César Levy, the 193 Gallery promotes emerging and established artists from all over the world, with a focus on the southern scene of the globe. The venetian headquarters of the gallery, in the Dorsoduro district, hosted the solo exhibition of New Zealand artist Rob Tucker (b. 1987, Auckland) until 27 April 2025. Perpetuate the Dreams explores the pictorial language of Tucker who, for the realisation of his works, draws inspiration from great masters such as David Hockney, Henri Matisse and Giorgio Morandi. The artist has established himself on the contemporary scene due to his representations of still life subjects, architectures and landscapes, characterised by geometric shapes and a vivid colour palette. His canvases have been shown in group and solo exhibitions in Sydney, Paris, London and New York.
ROB TUCKER’S EXHIBITION IN VENICE
As he said: “Over time, I have refined my style and technique ‒ still lifes and figurative landscapes made with geometric shapes, simplified forms and a colorful palette. Oversized, textured and graphic, my work is an exploration of color and composition. I like to approach my subjects in a playful way, trying to achieve a whimsical, harmonious and light result”. The main subjects of Tucker’s works are bottles, flowers pots and the iconic Bialetti coffee makers, which are present in works such One Confortable Cupa and An Ambiguous Breakfast, both dated 2024, but also industrial and architectonic elements, protagonists in Banana cake inside and The bridge before the hills, also executed in 2024 and exhibited in the spaces of 193 Gallery. In Tucker’s works the everyday objects become symbols of a hidden beauty that is waiting to be discovered by the viewer.
ROB TUCKER AT 193 GALLERY
The paintings, all large in size, invite viewers to dive in a suggestive and colourful world, interpreting still life in an unconventional way, like a lively scene. The attention is caught by a subtle detail, recurring in each canvas: a small comic strip, in which Tucker writes the title of the work. The exhibition presented for the first time sculptures made of polyurethane foam and covered with resin, depicting coffee makers and vases. These three-dimensional works clearly echo the subjects of the canvases on display in the gallery and, as pointed out by the gallery owner Clémence Pons during our visit, Tucker himself refers to them as three-dimensional paintings and not sculptures.
Perpetuate the Dreams, 193 Gallery, Venezia, 2025. In primo piano: Rob Tucker, A Dark and Gloomy Nightcap, 2024. Installation view. Photo Credit: Elena Andreato / Courtesy: Rob Tucker
Rob Tucker, An Ambiguous Breakfast, 2024. Acrylic painting, oil pastel and stick, oil varnish, diluted dye, and water pencil with an epoxy resin finish, 90 x 100 cm. Photo Credit: Elena Andreato / Courtesy: Rob Tucker
Perpetuate the Dreams, 193 Gallery, Venice, 2025. In the foreground: Rob Tucker, The bridge before the hills, 2024. Installation view. Photo Credit: Elena Andreato / Courtesy: Rob Tucker
Rob Tucker, One Comfortable Cupa, 2024. Acrylic paint, oil pastel and stick, oil glaze, diluted dye and watercolour pencil with epoxy resin finish, 90 × 100 cm. Photo credit: Elena Andreato / Courtesy: Rob Tucker
On 15 February 2025, the installation “Manifestica” at terzospazio in Venice, curated by three students from the Master of Visual Arts and Fashion degree course at the Iuav University of Venice, evoked the dynamics of desire.
The artist-run studio zolforosso born in Venice in 2017 by the will of six former students of the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, is the result of a process of expansion, which has seen it grow and extend its roots towards the mainland. After the opening of the first laboratory space in the Santa Croce district and the victory of a municipal call in 2019, the association, already active in the creation of open studios and artist residences, inaugurated a second headquarters modeled on the idea of white cubes and intended to host exhibition events. In February 2020, shortly before the lockdown, zolforosso chose Mestre as a place to expand its range of action, in response to the Venetian high rents and structural difficulties. Today zolforosso brings together eighteen artists and has three spaces: one in Venice, in Ramo Secondo Carminati, the other in Mestre, in Viale San Marco, and terzospazio, in the Santa Croce area, also in Venice.
MANIFESTICA IN VENICE
Right here, on 15 February 2025, was held the opening of Manifestica, the installation by Anna Zecchetto, Arianna Boffa and Costanza Mancuso, students from the Master of Visual Arts and Fashion degree course at the Iuav University of Venice. Manifestica offered the public the opportunity to take part in the installation-performance, evoking the dynamics of desire and putting in place the technique of the manifestation as a spiritual practice. The installation explored contemporary rituals as real tools of self-determination and resistance to the logics of capitalism. But what does manifestation mean today?
THE EXHIBITION INSPIRED BY THE PRACTICE OF MANIFESTATION
Rooted in the theory that inspired the law of attraction, the practice of manifestation is based on the assumption that our thoughts can influence the reality in which we live and consequently our most authentic selves. From Instagram to TikTok, this spiritual world, so dear to Gen Z, is beginning to make its way into today’s society, as evidenced by the Venetian installation-performance. Candles, incense, tarot cards, palo santo, laurel leaves, red sage, crystals and even sunset lamps, mirrors, candelabra enhanced the sense of intimacy and the spiritual component of Manifestica. A series of hanging silver threads indicated access to the room dedicated to the act of manifestation. A true contact between the human and the divine, between earth and sky. Entering, the audience experienced the sensation, increased by the presence of a TikTok audio montage, of immersing themselves in a magical dimension. On a table, like a sort of banquet, a few laurel leaves became the vehicle for new wishes, ready to be welcomed and fulfilled. During the performance of the ritual by the public, the presence of performer Chiara De Benedetti, engaged in tarot card reading and manifestation practices, made the aggregative dynamics activated by the installation even more explicit. Manifestica gave shape to an altar of possibility, a place of self-determination and resistance characterized by a kitsch and maximalist aesthetic based on the comparison between sacredness and belief, irony and power, human and divine. An invitation to ask oneself: what does it mean to desire, today?
What happens when contemporary art dialogues with the physics and architecture of the past? The Venetian exhibition “Leaps, gaps and overlapping diagrams” by Loris Cecchini at Ca’ Rezzonico was not just an exhibition of sculptures and installations, but a visual laboratory in which complex scientific concepts take shape through matter.
Loris Cecchini (Milan, 1969) is an artist recognized on the international scene for his ability to combine art, science and architecture. His installations explore the organic growth, modularity and vibration of matter. His works have been exhibited in museum contexts such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the MoMA in New York. He also participated in the Venice and Shanghai Biennales.
LORIS CECCHINI’S EXHIBITION IN VENICE
Leaps, gaps and overlapping diagrams, curated by Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei, was on display until 31 March 2025 at Ca’ Rezzonico – Museo del Settecento Veneziano. The permanent collection tells a fragment of an era in which art and science were closely linked, albeit with different languages. Cecchini’s works fit in as organic presences, structures that intertwine with Baroque frescoes and furnishings. If in the eighteenth-century art was a means to amaze, persuade and tell mythological or allegorical stories, today it can be a vehicle to explore the invisible connections that regulate the universe. The exhibition unfolded in several rooms of the museum, starting from the external portego, where two large installations welcomed the visitor. Waterbones and Arborexence are composed of metal modules that aggregate into fluid shapes, as if they were growing spontaneously on the façade of the building. The reference to crystal lattices and molecular structures is clear: Cecchini builds a bridge between the microscopic world and the macroscopic experience of urban space.
LORIS CECCHINI AT CA’ REZZONICO
Continuing inside, on the second floor, Cecchini has installed Wallwave Vibration (Chorus Transition Probabilities), a modular sculpture that develops like a wave on the wall surface. The title itself refers to the concept of transition probabilities, a key element in quantum physics to describe how a system can change state over time. On the third floor, in front of Giandomenico Tiepolo’s fresco, Il Mondo Novo, was Zigzags Particles (Telescope I), a telescope alluding to scientific observation and the revelation of new perspectives. In the eighteenth century, the new world was a metaphor for the geographical discoveries and optical illusions that fascinated the Venetian aristocracy. Now, Cecchini’s work invites us to explore the fundamental structures of reality through the gaze of contemporary science. Leaps, gaps and overlapping diagrams was not just an art exhibition, but a journey through the constituent elements of matter. An opportunity to reaffirm that the boundary between disciplines is increasingly blurred and that art, when well-conceived, can be an extraordinary tool to make the invisible visible.
In anticipation of the new edition, kicking off on 6 August 2025, the Locarno Residency found in Venice a showcase for emerging filmmakers with the screening at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi of a number of short films made by the three finalists selected from a shortlist of ten. Memory, society and the environment are the common themes of the film works presented during the exhibition.
On 16 January 2025, the Locarno Residency in Venice ended with the screening, curated by Daniela Persico, at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, home of the Swiss consulate, of three short films made by the winners of the 2024 edition. The works projected during the event were NSFW by Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi, Tunggang Langgang (Afterlives) by Timoteus Anggawan Kusno e Piazzale d’Italia by Enea Zucchetti. The winning projects of the edition are still in production: the feature films All Is in Order by Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi, Nest for the Wind by Timoteus Anggawan Kusno and I sogni degli animali (After Lions) by Enea Zucchetti. Part of the Locarno Film Festival, the Locarno Residency allows selected emerging filmmakers to make their own feature films with constant creative and professional support. Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi focuses on directing and screenwriting after having tried her hand at production and casting. The work shown during the event at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, NSFW, dated 2022, is a short film included in a larger project, consisting of four sections that make up the collective film Hyperlink, inspired by the risks and complexity of the digital world.
THE PROTAGONISTS OF THE LOCARNO RESIDENCY
The short film Tunggang Langgang (Afterlives) was made by Timoteus Anggawan Kusno in 2024. The Indonesian director, in his works, explores the themes of colonization and dictatorship in his country of origin, as demonstrated by the work staged at Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi. The short film delves into the Indonesian ritual of Kuda Lumping, during which young Indonesians dance using entangled horses and sometimes fall into a trance-like state, documented by the director himself. The work also evokes the colonial events that affected Indonesia through the history of some Dutch portraits, symbol of a conflict-ridden past. The last winner of the Locarno Residency, the Swiss director Enea Zucchetti, visually explores contemporary urban landscapes by looking at the relationship between the natural and the artificial environment. The short film screened in Venice, Piazzale d’Italia (2021), explores the fate of the Casino di Campione d’Italia using time jumps between the past and the present. The building, declared bankrupt in 2018, is now abandoned and stands as a ghost monument in an evocative but contradictory place.
The two-year program by GAMeC – Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo offers a vision of curatorship as a widespread and participatory event on the territory, involving local communities and international artists during the biennium 2024-25.
The Orobie Biennal – Thinking like a mountain develops in the years 2024-2025, bringing together local and international artists, from different backgrounds, called to conceive site-specific works, performances and laboratories in relation to the territory. More than just a distributed event, the Biennale reflects a dynamic curatorial vision that bridges the museum and its landscape. The project is curated by Lorenzo Giusti, head of GAMeC in Bergamo, with the support of associate curators Sara Fumagalli and Marta Papini and editorial coordinator Valentina Gervasoni. The title takes inspiration from a phrase coined by American ecologist and environmentalist Aldo Leopold in his book – A Sand County Almanac (1949) –, with some reflections related to the observation of the earth around his home. For Leopold, “thinking like a mountain” means recognizing the deep interconnectedness of natural elements – seeing nature as a living system on which our health and very survival depend. For GAMeC, it’s a call for awareness and a prompt to reconnect humanity with nature through collective engagement. The Biennale unfolds across a wide range of ecosystems, from the green spaces of the Province of Bergamo to the pre-Alpine ridges, the woods of the Parco dei Colli, and the plains of the Bassa Bergamasca.
GAMEC’S CURATORIAL VISION
Driven by the desire to bring art into dialogue with nature, the exhibition is an important milestone in both curatorial and environmental practice. Participation here isn’t just about ephemeral, collective gestures, it’s about creating long-lasting, locally embedded interventions. Over the course of the project, the team has been thinking about words that could clarify Thinking like a mountain’s intentions. Sara Fumagalli wrote: “Many African societies consider Ubuntu as a way of life that can be summed up by the phrase, ‘I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am’”. This philosophy of placing the individual in relation to the community is at the heart of the Biennale’s commitment to participation, sustainability, rootedness, and creativity. A rich program of events – including open studio, free guided tours, shared experiences on the territory, workshops – further strengthens the curatorial framework of Thinking Like a Mountain. Artists known for their sensitivity to environmental and social issues have been invited to lead long-term, community-focused projects. Highlights from 2024 include Sonia Boyce’s site-specific work Benevolence, Mercedes Azpilicueta’s performance Que este mundo permanezca, and Agostino Iacurci’s installation Dry Days, Tropical Nights, each contributing to the Biennale’s layered and expansive narrative. The initiative is also accompanied by a specially created magazine featuring critical essays and reportage by researchers, journalists, and writers. The content spans disciplines from art and design to agriculture and anthropology, with a special focus on local craft and manufacturing traditions.
THE FOURTH CYCLE OF THE OROBIE BIENNIAL
On 7 June 2025, the fourth cycle of the Orobie Biennial opened with the performance Spin and Break Free by Cecilia Bengolea at the headquarters of the Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale in Villa d’Almè. Running through 14 September 2025, the program features Landscape Painting (Mine), a site-specific work by German artist Julius von Bismarck at the historic mining site in Dossena. This powerful intervention reimagines the geological heritage of the area, inviting the public to engage with the mine through a newly conscious perspective – transforming stone into a canvas that reclaims collective memory. Also part of this cycle is Magnitudo, an installation by Bergamo-born artist Francesco Pedrini in the town of Roncobello. Consisting of three wooden structures positioned at the Passo del Vendulo, the work provides new vantage points for stargazing, drawing on research in archeoastronomy and other disciplines to prompt reflection on our origins and our relationship to time and the natural world. In Bergamo’s city center, visitors can explore Seasons, a city-wide exhibition by Maurizio Cattelan running until 26 October 2025. Featuring five works – some newly created, others previously exhibited –, the project strengthens the connection between the artworks and the urban fabric that surrounds them.
A HIGH-ALTITUDE PROJECT: EX. – MOUNTAIN FORGETS YOU
As a part of Thinking like a mountain, thanks to the collaboration between GAMeC and the Bergamo section of the Italian Alpine Club, was developed EX.: a project led by Andrea Cassi and Michele Versaci aimed at reconstructing the historic Aldo Frattini bivouac in Valbondione. Envisioned as an off-site, high-altitude extension of the museum, the bivouac will serve as a base for environmental monitoring, data collection, and ecosystem preservation. Beyond its functional role as a shelter, the bivouac is designed as an immersive aesthetic and sensory space – one that enables visitors to truly perceive and appreciate the natural world, echoing Aldo Leopold’s philosophy. From 7 June to 14 September 2025, GAMeC’s Spazio Zero will host Mountain Forgets You, an exhibition introducing the EX. project through research materials, documents, sketches, and models of the future structure. The show also features Thermocene (2025), a sound and visual installation created by Giorgio Ferrero, Rodolfo Mongitore (Mybosswas), and EX., further expanding the dialogue between art, science, and landscape.
The archive of Bruno Alfieri’s publishing work ‒ free, innovative, and truly independent ‒ is being exhibited for the first time at the Venetian gallery Mare Karina. The exhibition, curated by Chiara Carrera and Mario Lupano, will be open until 12 July 2025.
The exhibition, open until 12 July 2025 at Mare Karina gallery in Venice, could be described as an “open archive”: dedicated to the publishing legacy of Bruno Alfieri (Naples, 1927 – Milan, 2008), it focuses on the period between 1948 and 1973, the year Alfieri Edizioni d’Arte was acquired by Electa. The exhibition presents a collection of books, magazines, and documents from a previously non-existent archive, made possible by the curators’ extensive research and loans from various institutions, including the Giuseppe Marchiori Archive, the Centre for the Study of Visual Arts (CASVA) in Milan, the MART Library, and the Giancarlo Iliprandi Archive. A critic, curator, and gallerist in the fields of art and architecture, Alfieri was above all a pioneering publisher whose approach to publishing anticipated what we now regard as contemporary: vibrant, communicative, cross-disciplinary, and dynamic. Even advertisements and the colophon were not seen as intrusive elements, but rather as opportunities to reinforce the concept of a hybrid and contemporary magazine ‒ one that could speak to a broader audience by breaking down the rigid separation between “content” and “container” seen in the outdated publications written by intellectuals for other intellectuals. For Alfieri, text, graphic design, and photography were of equal importance, forming a unified whole ‒ a creative, authorial vision behind the editorial project. Through the interplay of visual and textual material, these publications formed conceptual and visual constellations via what he called “the game of juxtaposition”, as explained in the exhibition text. Alfieri’s artistic approach saw publishing as an active agent in the contemporary landscape, capable of proposing ideas, actions, and new relationships ‒ not just as a passive container reacting to what already exists.
PUBLISHING ACCORDING TO BRUNO ALFIERI
In today’s “image society” ‒ where an obsession with “aesthetic” in the growing world of independent magazines, both digital and print, often masks a lack of content ‒, Alfieri’s attention to form might seem obvious. But in 1948, at the start of his career, this was far from the norm. With the first Italian monograph on Paul Klee, followed by his editorial work for the Venice Biennale catalogues (1951-58) and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Alfieri encountered a rigid, elitist editorial landscape. In a 1949 letter to art historian Giuseppe Marchiori ‒ who would become a close friend and collaborator ‒ he criticised contemporary publishing as “the usual anthology, more or less poorly thrown together, of pompous and inconclusive articles tenuously linked together”. That same letter is now visualised in the exhibition as a “manifesto” of the editor-author’s thinking. From this frustration, Arte d’Oggi (1949-52) emerged ‒ not as a premeditated project, but as a response to a clear need for renewal. It was, in Alfieri’s words, a beautiful magazine “truly refined, but neither snobbish nor mad”, with an “airy and elegant” design, enjoyable to browse, and offering “a balanced mix of critical essays and informational content”. It was perhaps his background as a bookseller ‒ developed at the Serenissima bookshop founded by his father in 1938 ‒ that shaped his open and dynamic mindset, combining an aesthetic sensibility (viewing the book as a work of art) with a pragmatic understanding of publishing as a business. His books had to be widely distributed and at least bilingual to be commercially viable. This international vision characterised projects such as Zodiac (1957-63), a renowned trilingual architecture magazine, followed by Lotus (1963-70), now under the Electa group. Alfieri anticipated, by decades, the now essential trend of choosing contributors based not on language but on conceptual and artistic merit. This philosophy also guided the creation of Quadrum (1956-66), a four-language contemporary art journal founded with Belgian publisher Ernst Goldschmidt, which included major figures from various countries on its editorial board. With Metro (1960-70), his avant-garde magazine largely independent from the art market, Alfieri explored the relationship between text and image, always granting photographers full creative freedom, recognising them as integral to the artistic project. His other magazines ‒ Marmo (1962), Pagina, and Pacco (both 1962) ‒ represented further experiments in form, most notably through the introduction of the “imperfect square” format, which would go on to become highly influential in the field of art and architecture publishing.
THE EXHIBITION ABOUT BRUNO ALFIERI AT MARE KARINA IN VENICE
This vision of a “super-magazine” ‒ a constellation of interlinked elements unified by visual and conceptual coherence ‒ is reflected in the exhibition’s design. Standard metal structures frame the chronological narrative of Alfieri’s work, while still allowing for an open, spontaneous experience. Open magazines, suspended documents, and graphic and textual elements are arranged to evoke the very connections and relationships Alfieri sought to create through his publishing practice. The art of displaying, as realised by curators Carrera and Lupano, resolves the central paradox of exhibiting archival material: how to present objects that were made to be touched and browsed, yet must now be preserved. By blending the aesthetics of a bookshop with the performative nature of reading, the display itself “leafs through” the archive on behalf of the viewer. This temporary archive, housed at Mare Karina, is presented with the hope that it may one day become a permanent resource.
Vittoria Morpurgo
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
Bruno Alfieri. Publishing and magazines for contemporary art and architecture, exhibition view, Mare Karina, Venice 2025. Photo Tiziano Ercoli. Courtesy Mare Karina
The Brolo, Center of Art and Culture of the city of Mogliano Veneto, inaugurated its exhibition season with the anthological exhibition of the Bosnian artist Safet Zec, open until 18 May 2025. A pictorial exploration of the themes of exodus, abandonment and hope.
Included among the artists of the Venice Pavilion at 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2024, Safet Zec arrived at the Brolo Center of Art and Culture in Mogliano Veneto with twenty-four works that retrace the stages of his life and career. The artist’s story begins in Rogatica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), where he was born in 1943. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, he began his career in the former Yugoslavia, establishing himself as a painter and engraver. However, because of the war that broke out in 1992, he was forced to leave his homeland and flee to Italy, first to Udine and then, in 1998, to Venice, a city which marked his artistic rebirth, as can be seen from the more than one hundred exhibitions held so far between Europe and the United States.
SAFET ZEC’S EXHIBITION IN MOGLIANO VENETO
The exhibition, curated by Angelo Zennaro and entitled Le anime e i corpi (The souls and the bodies), reflects the artistic and personal journey of Zec: large canvases, mixed techniques collages and engravings are articulated along the two floors of the exhibition space of the Municipality of Mogliano Veneto. The central theme around which the exhibition is developed is that of the artist’s escape from his native country, a gesture that from personal becomes universal, bearing witness to the pain and brutality caused by wars. Zec himself, in a sentence in the exhibition catalogue, recalls: “I would like to remember that I was a refugee, a man who had to leave the country he loved, the country where he was born, where he lived, where he was educated, where he studied… a country torn apart by war and nationalism”. A painful reflection present in his works in the form of tangles of intertwined hands that touch souls and bodies that embrace and abandon themselves to each other, becoming the tale of a current tragedy. A leading exponent of Poetic realism, Zec creates secular representations imbued with spirituality, silent but radical denunciations that show the fragility of those who are forced to leave everything they know and love to go ff into the unknown. The work Abbraccio (Hug)(2000) synthesizes these aspects, having as protagonists two subjects that, dressed in white and stained with red, with their heads bowed, embrace and merge in an embrace that encompasses pain but infuses hope. The poetics of abandonment is connected to that of escape: clothes hanging in the closet, doors closed with bolts and uneaten food are signs left by those who are no longer there, pieces of life lived by invisible souls who, with a bit of luck, seek refuge elsewhere, sowing memories.
THE WORKS BY SAFET ZEC AT BROLO
Like so many fragments of life, the exhibition highlighted the subjects dear to the artist, articulated in works that tell of landscapes seen outside the window, objects of daily use, work tables in the various studios, angelic female figures. As proof that life begins again even after the exodus and abandonment, Zec dedicates some works to a place to which he is very attached, his Venetian studio, which portrays in works such as Tavolo con colori (Table with colors) (2009), in which brushes, jars, colors, bottles and other objects of the craft are characterized by a dense and full-bodied painting, that defines the detail wrapping the forms and charging them with matter. The island that will see him reassert as an internationally renowned artist would thus become his second homeland, to which he would dedicate works such as Porta veneziana con numero (Venetian door with number) (2018). “Deeply ethical and prophetic, because it is absolutely secular and yet intensely religious”, as the art historian Giandomenico Romanelli defines it in the pages of the catalogue, the art of Safet Zec is able to translate every moment of his life, especially the most painful, into shapes, colors and compositions that invite us to look at today’s world with new eyes, finding hope even in adversity.
Laura Ferrone
Safet Zec, Abbraccio, 2000, oil and collage on canvas, 100×80 cm
Safet Zec, Porta veneziana con numero, 2018, tempera, collage on paper and canvas, 70×50 cm
Safet Zec, Tavolo con colori, 2009, tempera, collage on paper and canvas, 120×160 cm
Safet Zec, Porta di legno, 2012, tempera and collage on paper, canvas on wooden stretcher, 200×160 cm
For the first time in Italy, Georgian artist Nino Kapanadze celebrates the Scrovegni Chapel frescoed by Giotto in a contemporary way. The theme of encounter and union are central to the exhibition curated by Marta Papini at the Bonollo Foundation in Thiene, open until 24 May 2025.
Established in Thiene, in the province of Vicenza, in 2023, the Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo Foundation promotes international contemporary art and emerging artists. The Foundation hosts two parallel projects: exhibitions curated by Chiara Nuzzi ‒ bringing together works donated from the private collection of the Bonollo family ‒ and the exhibitions curated by Marta Papini ‒ solo exhibitions of contemporary artists and new talents. Curated precisely by Marta Papini is Rendezvous, the first solo exhibition in Italy of Nino Kapanadze, open until 24 May 2025. The Georgian artist, born in 1990, works in Paris, where she earned a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Her pictorial technique explores the abstract and the figurative through the use of soft colours obtained from natural pigments. In her depictions, she evokes Christian symbolism and sacred art, representing her own perception of the divine. Rendezvous in French means appointment, meeting: starting from this word, the curator has articulated the exhibition around the concept of the union of lovers, nature and the divine.
NINO KAPANADZE ON SHOW IN THIENE
The exhibition was inspired by the Georgian artist’s visit to the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, where she was able to admire the frescoes painted by Giotto. In the first space of the Bonollo Foundation, the former Chiesa delle Dimesse, Kapanadze wanted to pay tribute to the so-called first kiss in art history, that between Joachim and Anne, depicted by Giotto in the Paduan chapel. The theme of union has been taken up by the Georgian artist through the site-specific installation Tanto gentile e tanto onesta. The work, composed of two chiffon sheets coloured by hand with natural pigments, symbolizes the clothes worn by Mary’s parents in the medieval representation of Padua. The two sheets, placed opposite each other, descended lightly until they met gently on the floor in front of the altar, inviting one to cross the threshold of the Foundation to look at the work more closely. In the middle of the room, in place of the altarpiece, a blue tondo, Incontro, celebrated the figure of Giotto. In the room next to the Chiesa delle Dimesse, twenty-six sheets of paper, each coloured entirely with a natural pigment, offered a taste of the palette used by the artist for the creation of the works placed in the following rooms.
NINO KAPANADZE AT THE FONDAZIONE BONOLLO
The spaces of the Foundation also hosted three large-scale works, opposed to a smaller work, which explores the theme of the encounter through different languages: in Rendezvous 27, a raptor inspired by the angels painted in the Scrovegni Chapel symbolizes the point of contact between the divine and human worlds. In Rendezvous 28 and Rendezvous 31, on the other hand, the protagonist is nature, the place where, according to Kapanadze, the perception of the divine occurs. The artist’s aim is to offer her vision of purity and sacredness, focusing on the solemnity of Creation. In the last rooms of the Foundation dedicated to the exhibition were Rendezvous 29 and Rendezvous 30, produced by the artist in a site-specific way to dialogue with each other. In them, two opposing elements such as fire and water came into communication, as proof of the indissoluble bond that unites them. Within the same space, several lithographs with floral subjects were placed, representing the union that gives life: the cohesion of nature described throughout the exhibition by Nino Kapanadze.
Rendezvous, Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo, Thiene, 2025. In the foreground: Nino Kapanadze, Rendezvous 30, 2025. Installation view. Photo credit: Giovanni Canova / Courtesy: Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo
Rendezvous, Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo, Thiene, 2025. From left to right: Nino Kapanadze, Rendezvous 28, Rendezvous 31 and Rendezvous 27, 2025. Installation view. Photo credit: Giovanni Canova / Courtesy: Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo
Rendezvous, Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo, Thiene, 2025. In the foreground: Nino Kapanadze, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta, 2025; in the background: Nino Kapanadze, Incontro, 2025. Installation view. Photo credit: Giovanni Canova / Courtesy: Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo
Rendezvous, Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo, Thiene, 2025. In the foreground: Nino Kapanadze, Rendezvous 29, 2024–2025. Installation view. Photo credit: Giovanni Canova / Courtesy: Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo
Rendezvous, Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo, Thiene, 2025. In the foreground: Nino Kapanadze, Rendezvous 1 to Rendezvous 26, 2024–2025. Installation view. Photo credit: Giovanni Canova / Courtesy: Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo
Bombs, containers, flags and debris – these are the key elements of the first major European exhibition dedicated to Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi. His work tackles the devastating consequences of war and the urgent need for remembrance. “Icarus” is on view at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan until 27 July, 2025.
Icarus is the title of the first large-scale European exhibition dedicated to Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi (Fukuoka, 1959), on display in the Navate and Cubo spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan until 27 July 2025. Curated by Vicente Todolí with Fiammetta Griccioli, the show features monumental works, some site-specific, tracing the artist’s practice from the 1990s to the present. Widely considered one of Japan’s most influential contemporary artists, Yanagi explores urgent and complex themes such as nationalism, borders, identity, and conflict, aiming to raise awareness and reflect on how human arrogance can lead to ruin.
YUKINORI YANAGI’S EXHIBITION IN MILAN
The installation, conceived as a monumental narrative with a strong impact, consists of new and existing works placed in relation to each other to suggest new meanings. The result is a balanced dialogue of solids and voids that unfolds in the Hangar’ Navate. The monumentality of the place is mirrored in that of the works, which catapult the visitor into a space where it is easy to feel disoriented and helpless. The gaze is lost and the pace slows among Yanagi’s interventions, in which the desire for power and war echo. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the work from which the show takes its name: Icarus Container 2025. It is a meandering, labyrinthine installation consisting of sixteen containers, inside which visitors can wander. Space is dilated, perception is altered by the presence of mirrors on which excerpts from Yukio Mishima’s poem Icarus are displayed. Following the verses, the audience is led on a journey that is as real as it is metaphorical, in search of light, attempting to escape the arrogance and desires that often cloud the mind of human beings, leading them to their downfall. The atmosphere is charged with tension: there persists a strong sense of inadequacy given by the dimness, the first deafening and then low and threatening sounds, the debris and the imposing bomb suspended above the heads of the visitors.
YANAGI’S WORKS IN THE NAVATE OF PIRELLI HANGARBICOCCA
At the entrance, a large animal eye flickers with haunting images of atomic mushroom clouds, including Hiroshima’s. Project God-zilla 2025 – The Revenant from “El Mare Pacificum” (2025) is a towering heap of wreckage – broken machinery, toxic canisters, and metal bars – watched over by the menacing gaze of the Godzilla monster. The scene evokes a post-apocalyptic landscape, where Godzilla’s eye symbolizes the fear surrounding nuclear fallout in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s a stark warning of the suffering that could still lie ahead, affecting both humanity and the natural world. For Icarus, the piece is paired with Article 9 (1994), made from flashing red neon tubes forming fragments of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution – a passage that renounces war and aspires to global peace. By setting the brutal force of Project God-zilla 2025 against the soft glow of Article 9, Yanagi constructs a stark dualism: a critique of a democracy that, in his words, “It’s like democracy came to Japan like a gift from above” in the form of a constitution written in 1946 by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. One of the most striking pieces is Absolute Dud (2007), a full-scale iron replica of “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. By freezing the moment just before detonation, Yanagi reflects on how conflict always looms nearby. As long as humanity places its faith in technological power – the atomic bomb –, it remains trapped in a state of restless vigilance. The exhibition concludes in the Cubo, the only naturally lit space, with The World Flag Ant Farm 2025. This work consists of two hundred plexiglass boxes representing both recognized and unrecognized nations, all connected by narrow tunnels and filled with colored sand. Live ants move through the structure, constantly shifting the sand and transforming the flags. The piece becomes a living performance – a metaphor for interconnectedness beyond borders or national identities. The decision to end in a bright, open space symbolizes a potential path forward: a hopeful exit from a future that otherwise seems bleakly predetermined.
On the occasion of Elio Armano’s eightieth birthday, the Archaeological Museum in Padua hosted, until 6 April 2025, an exhibition dedicated to one of the most influential sculptors of the contemporary scene.
The earth, in its purest essence, becomes art in the hands of Elio Armano (Padua, 1945). Terrestre is not only the material from which his sculpture comes to life, but it is also the deep root of a civic and artistic commitment that spans decades of research and innovation. In the anthological exhibition curated by Stefano Annibaletto and Francesca Veronese, terracotta becomes the thread of a dialogue between past and present that is renewed in the rooms of the Archaeological Museum in Padua. Each work of Armano is a piece of land that tells stories and reveals a sculpture that is not only form, but an act of social and political reflection. Among the archaeological finds, his creations emerge not as mere copies of the past, but as modern interpretations, full of meaning and life. The exhibition has been developed in the rooms of the Eremitani Museum, where the sculptures of Armano have integrated harmoniously with the archaeological context in which they were inserted. His terracotta works, which evoke the craft tradition, were related to ancient finds, creating visual and conceptual connections between different eras.
ELIO ARMANO ON SHOW IN PADUA
The exhibition retraces the artistic evolution of the sculptor, through a selection of works belonging to the different phases of his artistic research. Among the most significant are the Giardini in scatola made in the 1970s, small landscapes enclosed inside perspective boxes inspired by the painting of Francis Bacon. Once in the Mosaic Hall, we encountered the Testeforate and the Bottoni cosmici, works that move on the borderline between figuration and abstraction, exploring themes related to identity, perception and the human-universe relationship. The installation that matched Armano’s work with the Mesopotamian statuette of Uruk (IV millennium B.C.) exalted the sculpture as a timeless language, able to bring together the interventions of the contemporary artist and the precious archaeological evidence. Armano’s work reflects his openness to different artistic traditions, from African and pre-Columbian sculpture to the visual vocabulary of Henry Moore. His works are never mere aesthetic objects, but vehicles of a social and political message that has its roots in a civil and public dimension, as shown by his vision of sculpture as an integral part of the urban environment.
“Stavo cercando il tuo cuore lì dentro ma ho trovato solo il latte” (“I was looking for your heart in there, but ionly found milk”) is the title of Cecilia De Nisco’s personal exhibition, curated by Marta Papini and specificallyconceivedfor the spaces of the former Chiesa delle Dimesse in Thiene, in the province of Vicenza, now home to the Bonollo Foundation.Collectors Sandra Dal Santo and Giancarlo Bonollo established the Bonollo Foundation with theintentof promoting and giving value to contemporary art,by means ofinnovative projects that offer visitors a perspective on the current international art scene. Inline with thisgoal,the collectors were drawn to the work of Cecilia De Nisco(b. 1997, Parma), who created seven oil paintings specifically for thespaces of the former Chiesa delle Dimesse, the headquarters of the Bonollo Foundation in Thiene, under the curatorship of Marta Papini.The exhibition, on display until the first of March 2025, opened with the altarpiece Marameo, housed inside a finely decorated niche adorned with floral ornaments. The work introduces the viewer to De Nisco’s artistic exploration, where moving bodies intertwine within an undefined space. Thefigures seemto orbit silently around the body lying on the ground, driven by an obsessive attraction to its flesh.
CECILIA DE NISCO’S EXHIBITION IN THIENE
Irony characterizes the titles of De Nisco’s works,as seen inPiccole catastrofi per minuti intimi #1 (Small catastrophes for intimate minutes #1): the figure on the right seems to surrender to a painful embrace, evoking the encounter between the cold blue of the sky and the warm atmospheric hues that envelop the faces. The intimacy of the scene is suggested by the hand in the foreground, a symbolic element omnipresent in De Nisco’s painting.Inthe workFrecciatine, the hands transform into dark silhouettes that wrap around the human figures, emerging from the shadows to clutch their bodies. Within the flow of a timeless rhythm, the pure innocence of the figure at the bottom softens the violent act unfolding at the center of the scene. Fragile balances between demonic and childlike forces animate the artist’s world where, within a grotesque framework, a subtly ironic grin takes shape,embodied bythe mocking face in Slacciami la vita(Untiemy life).
THE ART AS CONCEIVED BY CECILIA DE NISCO
In the intimate scenes painted by Cecilia De Nisco, the subtle discomfort animating thecharactersseeps into the viewer’s perception, making them feel like an unwanted intruder. Tonal contrasts, movemen, and facial expressions reflect the artist’s desire to create a dimension suspended between irony and uneasiness, in a constant tension between desireand denial. The exhibition in Thiene, masterfully curated by Marta Papini, invites us to contemplate De Nisco’s great works with a curious gaze, to tiptoe into her ethereal spaces.
Maramèo, 2024, oil on linen, 120×228 cm. Courtesy the Artist and VIN VIN Vienna/Naples
Cecilia De Nisco, Frecciatine, installation view curated by Marta Papini, Fondazione Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo. Courtesy the Artist and VIN VIN Vienna/Naples
Cecilia De Nisco, Stavo cercando il tuo cuore lì dentro ma ho trovato solo latte , installation view curated by Marta Papini, Fondazione Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo
Cecilia De Nisco, Stavo cercando il tuo cuore lì dentro ma ho trovato solo latte , installation view curated by Marta Papini, Fondazione Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo
Cecilia De Nisco, Stavo cercando il tuo cuore lì dentro ma ho trovato solo latte , installation view curated by Marta Papini, Fondazione Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo. Courtesy the Artist and VIN VIN Vienna/Naples
The need to narrate war and the urgency to build peace are at the heart of the group exhibition on view at gres art 671 in Bergamo until 12 October 2025. The exhibition design is signed by 2050+.
de bello. notes on war and peace is the first group exhibition at gres art 671, the new cultural hub in Bergamo opened in 2023 in a former industrial area. Curated by director Francesca Acquati in collaboration with 2050+, and conceived by journalist Salvatore Garzillo and war photographer Gabriele Micalizzi, the exhibition addresses the theme of war in a universal way, without analyzing individual conflicts but denouncing violence in all its forms. The aim is to break down historical, physical and geopolitical barriers, using art as a means to transform pain into resilience. The viewer is invited to reflect on the brutality of war and the savagery humans are capable of inflicting upon one another through a narrative that emphasizes the urgency of peace. The exhibition unfolds across five thematic sections – apparent peace, alarm, war, ruins, resistance –, each contributing to a collective narrative shaped by the work of more than thirty artists, including Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, and Anselm Kiefer. The mediums span from painting to sculpture, from photography to video, and sound. The exhibition develops from the curatorial and exhibition design conceived by 2050+ (Erica Petrillo and Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli), an interdisciplinary studio that combines curatorial practices and architecture. The installation consists of prefabricated bricks and concrete that, when assembled, evoke the appearance of a dismembered house: soft lighting, openings in the walls and rubble create a deeply emotional experience.
THE EXHIBITION “DE BELLO. NOTES ON WAR AND PEACE” IN BERGAMO
The precariousness of peace and the advance of war through propaganda characterize the first section of the exhibition, dedicated to apparent peace. In the second section ‒ alarm ‒, the exhibition is structured to engage the viewer even more. One finds oneself in an environment loaded with sounds, sirens and drones ‒ activated without warning and perceived as threats. As visitors move deeper into the space, unease intensifies. A monochromatic labyrinth of walls grows taller, culminating in the central section – war. These towering, suffocating structures do not allow one to look beyond. The eye thus focuses on the large tapestries displaying the photography of Gabriele Micalizzi. These works convey the chaos of conflict, the fight for freedom, and the quiet, haunting endurance that follows devastation. Ruins, the penultimate section, unfolds through a narrow corridor where there are works that express the idea of devastation and what remains. Among them is Alfredo Jaar’s 2013 lightbox Milan, 1946: Lucio Fontana visits his studio on his return from Argentina, capturing the artist walking over the ruins of his bombed-out workspace.
THE EXHIBITION DESIGN BY 2050+
The final section – resistance – closes the exhibition on a note of resilience. Here, war-torn landscapes, shattered walls, and scattered objects are reframed as symbols of endurance. One poignant example is Joseph Beuys’ 1969 Sled (Schlitten), which evokes his own wartime survival and healing through materials imbued with metaphorical meanings. In this closing space, the heavy walls recede. Natural light floods in through large windows overlooking the internal garden, suggesting clarity, recovery, and hope after a harrowing journey through conflict. With this project, 2050+ has done more than staging an exhibition. They’ve crafted an immersive experience – a spatial manifesto that amplifies the core message of the show: reject war. Now and always.
In the historic center of Padua opens the new 21Gallery with an exhibition that, until 30 August2025, celebrates the art of free thought through a century of avant-garde and provocations. Among the artists are Francesco Clemente, Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami.
At a time when critical thinking is often sidelined and conformity disguised as the norm, freedom of expression takes on an increasingly urgent value. Art is no longerjust form or representation, it becomes possibility. A fertile ground for uncomfortable visions and eccentric voices. It is on this line that moves AUDACI. Dalle avanguardie storiche agli artisti mascherati, l’arte del libero pensiero, the inaugural exhibition of 21Gallery’s new headquarters in Padua. The exhibition celebrates not only the power of free thought, but the city itself, which has always welcomed and cultivated intellectual freedom, transforming it into knowledge, art and innovation. “Padua is a city that has never feared free thought. Its spirit has always been that of those who dare, those who challenge the above,thosewho look beyond”, writes Elena Comin, director of the gallery, in the introductory text of the catalogue, evoking the figure of Galileo Galilei and the innovative painting of Giotto.
THE 21GALLERY IN PADUA
The momentum towards cultural autonomy and avant-garde that characterizes the history of Padua is now given a new form in the AUDACIexhibition and the mission of 21Gallery.With the opening of the Paduaheadquarters, the vision of the gallery, born in 2021 in Treviso thanks to the support of Alessandro Benetton, who has chosen to invest in the ideas of the young entrepreneur Davide Vanin, is strengthened and expanded. The project was born with the aim of promoting culture,with a particular focus on visual arts, generatinga positive impact on the territory, promotingthe dialogue between art and business and makingthe art system more accessible, involvingnew collectors and offering concrete support to the artists represented.The exhibition, curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, traces an itinerary that goes from the historical avant-garde to the most radical protagonists of the contemporary scene.An exploration of independent thought, subversive creativity, art as a force for resistance: visions that have challenged the dogmas of their time and often paid the price with isolation, censorship, discredit.
THE AUDACI EXHIBITION AT THE 21GALLERY
Among the thirty or so works on display, we find names who have written decisive pages in the history of modern and contemporary art: from the futuristic dynamism of Balla to the abstract and vibrant painting of Accardi. But it is in the works of Cindy Sherman and Catherine Opie that one of the most intense turning points becomes evident: identity, the representation of the body as a battlefield. The final part of the exhibition looks at the present with a lucid and criticaleye. Among the invited artists, Gonzalo Borondo and Laika address current issues with direct and provocative language. The mask, in the case of Laika, is a tool for redefining creative freedom.An approach that brings to mind the practices of artists such as Manu Invisible and Andrea Villa,mentionedhere but not in the exhibition, who use art as a form of activism. An exhibition such as AUDACIinvites the spectator to observe an art that renounces complacency in order to become necessity. Because the most vital art arises from indocile thinking, by those who do not stop questioning the world.
The exhibition “Memory of Hope” by Kazakh artist Gulnur Mukazhanova, hosted in the Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian in Venice, is configured as a journey into memory, identity and spirituality through the language of weaving.
The exhibition Memory of Hope in the Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian is part of the project È il vento che fa il cielo. La Biennale di Venezia sulle orme di Marco Polo. It is an initiative of the Biennale’ Historical Archives curated by Luigia Lonardelli to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death. The Biennale’s Historical Archives thus becomes a reservoir of active memory, where the past is not just documentation but living material to build new narratives. The first stage of the project was in Hangzhou, China, with Il sentiero perfetto. The second stage, in Venice, featured Gulnur Mukazhanova, who explored the geography of a lesser-known journey, that of Marco Polo’s father and uncle, Niccolò and Matteo, across the Kazakh steppes, a place of connection and exchange between East and West.
GULNUR MUKAZHANOVA IN VENICE
Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984, Semipalatinsk), after specializing in textile arts at the National Academy of Arts in Almaty, moved to Berlin in 2008 and attended the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, deepening her knowledge of textile art and establishing a dialogue between her culture of origin and the European context. The Kazakh artist’s attention is therefore focused on little-known archives and stories, giving shape to works that combine the need to recover one’s origins and the desire to project oneself into the future. The Venetian exhibition invited the visitor to walk around the work along its perimeter, in an environment that has become a place of introspection. The three layers of fabric that cover it represent the different dimensions of human existence: body, mind and soul. Developed in an infinite shape, if observed in plan it reveals lines that ideally rise towards heaven and descend towards the underworld, resting on an oval platform that recalls a flame, a symbol of transformation and renewal. The layers depict the symbolism of the tree of life which, in the Kazakh nomadic tradition, has a profound meaning of union between the sky, the earth and human beings. The weave of fabrics, pouring like a waterfall onto the last layer, reflects the formation of personal and collective identity, the soul of every individual and society, suggesting that it develops through experiences lived thanks to the body and the mind.
THE WORKS BY GULNUR MUKAZHANOVA
The work communicates with the space by incorporating the columns that, from simple architectural elements, become visual obstacles capable of stimulating the visitor’s imagination, encouraging them to ask themselves what lies behind the columns. The layering of fabrics evokes a non-static identity. Many different textiles have been used: the merino wool felt stands out and it symbolizes the connection to nomadic cultural roots, the combed merino wool has been chosen for its fineness and softness, the white silk recalls light and the vegetable viscose velvet, a fabric historically produced in Russia until the 1980s, then banned for environmental reasons. All this is combined with scraps from Chinese production. Each fabric is worked differently to express specific conceptual qualities, incorporating symbols such as the dragon, a mythological creature as a metaphor for rebirth, continuity and spiritual guidance, and the phoenix, which evokes the ideas of regeneration and beauty. “In the archives there is living matter […] The archive is that instinct that we all have to classify in order to understand ourselves,” explained the curator Luigia Lonardelli during the presentation of the project at Ca’ Giustinian. After Venice, the project will stop in Istanbul in the autumn of 2025, continuing the path of research and dialogue between cultures along the stages of Marco Polo’s journey.
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope, exhibition view, Ca’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Portrait of Gulnur Mukazhanova. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Portrait of Gulnur Mukazhanova and Luigia Lonardelli. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope , exhibition view, Ca ’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope , exhibition view, Ca ’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope , exhibition view, Ca ’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope , exhibition view, Ca ’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope , exhibition view, Ca ’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Gulnur Mukazhanova. Memory of Hope , exhibition view, Ca ’ Giustinian, Sala delle Colonne, Venezia 2024 – 25. Photo Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Until 4 March 4 2025, the Dom Pérignon Rooms at Ca’ Pesaro–International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice hosted “Sculpture as a Dead Language”, an exhibition focused on the dialogue between Giorgio Andreotta Calò and the city, starting from the reflections of Arturo Martini. With a selection of works spanning over two decades of the artist’s career, the exhibition invited visitors to reflect on sculpture as a living trace, made of memory and material.
The small yet precious exhibition by Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Venice, 1979) in the Dom Pérignon Rooms of Ca’ Pesaro sparked an extensive reflection on material, in relation to the space that has both welcomed and generated it. Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni, the exhibition draws from the renowned text by Arturo Martini La scultura lingua morta, published in Venice in 1945. This anguished declaration radically attacks sculpture, questioning whether itcan be redemptive or universal. From Martini’s deep and intimate questioning arose a dialogue, a tête-à-tête, between Giorgio Andreotta Calò and his native city. Venice is framed as a reservoir of visual and auditory stimuli, as well as rhythmic crossingsto which one can always return. The dialogue highlights the plasticity and physicality of Venice, guiding us through the heart of the “dead language” ‒ a journey marked by the works of Andreotta Calò created over the course of twenty years.
GIORGIO ANDREOTTA CALÒ IN VENICE
The first work is encountered almost by chance: Medusa, one of the many pieces from the artist’s expansive series, now part of the civic collection of Ca’ Pesaro thanks to the Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea (PAC2021). Conceived as a “faulty” work, it has been revised and reworked multiple times. Today, it is positioned in a bright corner along the first-floor landing of the museum. Giorgio Andreotta Calò describes it as “rightly brutal,” comparing it to the shifting, twisted form of the palace itself.After ascending a few steps, the first of the Dom Pérignon Rooms at Ca’ Pesaro, intentionally dark and intimate, housed a unique example from the Medusaseries (a subject very dear to the artist), placed in dialogue with Martini’s famous Testa di Medusa(1929). The two round, imposing heads rested on a white pedestal, the base of which extended into a mirrored panel that reflected the two sculptures in a 360-degree view, all amplified by the soft, almost gloomy lighting.
GIORGIO ANDREOTTA CALÒ AT CA’ PESARO
In the second room, overlooking the Grand Canal, Calò explored the history of the building and the various structural changes it has undergone through his celebrated Clessidre, Pinne Nobilis, and Carotaggi series. On the floor, visitorscould admire the Carotaggi, the result of investigations carried out by the Public Works professionals of the Municipality of Venice on the façade of Ca’ Pesaro itself. The Pinna Nobilisseries, named after the mollusk whose survival is now at risk, consisted of shell-like sculptures scattered throughout the room, even extending to the small balcony outside. They resemble a cocoon opening and serve as a tribute to Venice, the artist’s mother city.Finally, the imposing Clessidre, several models of which were displayed, were created between 2017 and 2022. They evoke the union between Giorgio Andreotta Calò’s art, his city, and the space itself. Their form mirrors the trunks of the lagoon, sunk in the water and corroded by time and the rhythm of the waves.Framing this visceral relationship with Venice, on the walls of the final room were research, drawings, and traces from photographic campaigns in the collections of Ca’ Pesaro, reflections and intertwining of a history merging with Calò’s works, thanks to the collaboration with the young Venetian collective Ipercubo (Nicolò Brunetta, Matteo Rattini, Stefano Stoppa, and Erica Toffanin), who producesand curatesartistic projects related to publishing.
