Senza mai sfiorire. Densità e leggerezza nella scultura italiana contemporanea Without ever fading. Density and lightness in contemporary Italian sculpture) presents to the public a selection of works of artists born in the 1970s. The exhibition path combines different interpretations of sculptural language: a survey of the trends and developments of a medium in continuous transformation, capable of constantly challenging itself and its assumptions, renewing and regenerating itself over time. The set-up, characterised by one work per room, is designed to enhance the singularity of each work and create an intimate dialogue between the works and Palazzo Collicola's Piano Nobile. The age factor, together with the reflection on the plastic dimension, is not the only distinctive element. In fact, all the works exhibited seem to share a specific internal tension: in each work, references to tradition coexist with elements that seem to contradict it, a sense of gravity and lightness, organic materials and others of industrial origin, duration and ephemeral character.

Eternity, her responsive body and other stories, solo show by Petra Feriancová, hosted in the Noble Floor of Palazzo Collicola, already suggests the narrative nature of the project, because of its title. Here, the artist reinterpreting the spaces and the features of this old dwelling, through a series of interventions characterized by an almost mimetic quality, conceived for this occasion. The exhibition design includes a technically heterogeneous selection of works, embracing sculptures, installations and sound works, in order to make them dialogue, in contrast or in harmony, with the rooms composing the noble residence and the historical artefacts preserved there. According to this approach, works belonging to different periods and languages, not caring about chronological or stylistic hierarchies, coexist together, giving rise to new associations of contents and directions of meaning, perceptible just in backlight, emerging thanks to the contribution given by the artist. The result is a unified narrative, dealing, timed along the rooms of the flat, with topics such as metamorphosis, the notion of memory, time, the concept of interpretation and that one of archive, always been the focus of the artistic practice by Feriancová.

The collection on mutual aid societies and workers' associations created by Giovanna Moro (1920-2012) testifies to the fight for decent work and the right to education for all. The birth of these societies was an important milestone in the history of labor movements and a sign of awareness of the power of collective action. The collector's decision to donate the collection to a public institution that ensures its wide accessibility has enriched the existing documentation at the Library of Modern and Contemporary History in Rome.

TERRENO. Tracce del disponibile quotidiano is a multidisciplinary exhibition that relates materiality and memory, bringing together cultural traditions, historical documents and everyday artistic practices, generating new collective imaginaries. The volume brings together a range of images, essays and reprints, offering a unique dialogue between artistic, scientific, and social disciplines. Inspired by Gianni Celati “accessible everyday”, the exhibition takes the visitor on a journey dedicated to the scenes, landscapes, and gestures from the everyday world that often go unnoticed and are rediscovered, grasping their value and revealing new and possible meanings. The rooms of the museum are filled with works of art from the MAXXI Collections, artefacts and photographic documents from the Museum of Civilisations in Rome, editorial materials, design and architectural projects, and a new sound production. This is how fluid and changeable stories and tales are born, joining ordinariness and tradition, historical documentation and invention, in a strong bond with the territory and its artistic and creative community. With: Arjun Appadurai, Franco Assetto, Amedeo Aureli, Yto Barrada, Gianfranco Baruchello and Henry Martin, David Blamey, Diego Carpitella, Luciano Caruso and Giuliano Longone, Cavart, Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi e Riccardo Rosso, Continuum, Mario Cresci, Enrico Crispolti, Clémentine Deliss, Georges Didi-Huberman, Claudia Durastanti, Francesco De Melis, Formafantasma, Francesco Garnier Valletti, Luigi Ghirri, Ezio Gribaudo, Illustrazione Abruzzese, Tim Ingold, Enzo Mari, Ana Mendieta, Bruno Munari, Ramona Ponzini, Quarto di Santa Giusta Centro Multimediale, Moira Ricci, Annabella Rossi, Bernard Rudofsky, Marco Schiavone, Shimabuku, Alessandra Spranzi, Susan Sontag, Superstudio, Luca Trevisani, Nico Vascellari, Andrea Viliani, Luca Vitone and all the creators of artefacts belonging to the Collections of Popular Arts and Traditions of the Museum of Civilisations. 

HE FAILED TO SAVE THE ONE HE LOVED MOST is not just the title of an exhibition that opened in the spring of 2021 at the Albumarte space in Rome. Rather, it adds another dimension, bringing greater depth to the original idea of the exhibition itself and Iulia Ghiță's artistic journey as a whole. Through the artist's works and the valuable contributions of the authors invited to write, the publication becomes a reflection on complex themes and archetypal concepts such as sacrifice, humiliation and death, exploring their ambiguous nature and creating a reflection on contrasting aspects of the human experience.

BARRIERA UNINSTITUTE is the aftershow, a critical inventory of materials documenting the seventeen years of activity at BARRIERA, a contemporary art space founded in 2007 in Turin. This publication seeks to engage with the broader debate surrounding the creation of 'institutional' archives within the fluid practices of contemporary art. How can we envision the future by reflecting on the past? And what role do the archive and the act of archiving play for an institution in this process?
The prefix UN in BARRIERA UNINSTITUTE signifies a re-examination of the status of an entity and a space, evoking the concept of a 'para-institution,' 'quasi-institution,' or 'non-institution.' Its purpose is to encourage the organization to continually recalibrate itself around new projects and programming choices, always moving toward more experimental and dialogical forms.
Rather than emphasizing the artwork, the exhibition as a product, or the collection as heritage, the book focuses on so-called 'printed matter'-ephem-eral, carefully crafted materials that have promoted and supported both exhibition and workshop projects. These include exhibition catalogs, invitations, gallery texts, postcards, leaflets, and booklets. Following this predominantly visual, asynchronous, and 'eccentric' documentary section, the book organizes an index with the events, exhibitions, catalogues, and artists who have passed through BARRIERA's space.

Inizio fine. Rotondo. Tutte le cose del mondo (Beginning, End. Round. All Things of the World) is the exhibition that artist Chiara Camoni conceived for the Piano Nobile of Palazzo Collicola on the occasion of the 67th Festival dei Due Mondi. The title, similar to a lullaby or nursey rhyme, anticipates the course of the exhibition, based on circularity, accumulation and reiteration, with the works accompanying the visitor through the rooms in a dreamy and ancestral atmosphere, populated by spirits, divinities, souls, and animals. References to the natural and plant world-a fixed presence in Camoni’s production-meet with the splendour of the rooms of Palazzo Collicola, in an unprecedented dialogue that also features a conspicuous body of works made especially for the exhibition. The Piano Nobile and the artist’s works thus form a special alliance: the relationship with the architectural space is underlined by a long snake made of different materials and media which, ‘crawling’ in all the rooms, marks the path of the exhibition.

This volume on the publications of Ugo La Pietra begins with a long correspondence between the artist and his associates - (Vico Magistretti, Adolfo Natalini, Franco Vaccari, Enzo Mari...) - and aims at making ideas and thoughts circulate by sharing his books. This collection of books constitutes an infinite shelf that goes from 1965 to the present day. From the catan logues of the early radical exhibitions to the 1970s art and design research and experimentation into 'degrees of freedom', 'design reconversions', 'Interior/Exterior' to which we can add 'Tissural Structures'; physical and telematic journeys into the new territories of living. Then there are the volumes that delve into various themes by gathering experiences as well as specific works based on inhabiting places by using random and disruptive actions. A book is in fact not only the best medium for transcribing design and meta-project proposals, but also the starting point for Ugo La Pietra's radical theories and artistic research. The book concludes with his involvement in magazines, perhaps the most experimental and radical aspect of his work that allowed for the development of collaborations, co-designs and the diffusive distribution of counter-projectual and political thought.

Concerto, Roberto Fassone's first solo exhibi-tion in a public museum was created with the idea of retracing the artist's first fifteen years of activity. The exhibition hosts a selection of works-one per room-representative of his singular artistic practice. Like songs that follow one after the other during a concert, the works of Concerto traverse Fassone's entire artistic production, outlining the salient features - as well as the uniqueness-of his poetics, inviting visitors to embrace his ironic, surreal, psychedelic universe.

This book gather Dino Ignani's Dark Portraits collection, a selection of approximately 200 photographs that are part of a much larger series of shots, mostly portraits, taken over the course of five years, and effectively evoke the spirit of the 1989s in the dynamic city of Rome. Ignani's research is a window on the look of the young adults who animated the clubs of the so-called Dark scene in Rome, a scene that was in fact diverse and multifaceted, presenting a range of unprecedented aesthetic and individual declinations that flowed into other moods and styles of the time.

Hesitation is a central concept in Bertolo’s work. L'hésitation (15 June – 8 September 2024) is an anthology exhibition of the work of one of the most influential painters of his generation in Italy in two venues, Atelier Maisenthal and CEAAC di Strasbuourg. The exhibition gives an overview of Bertolo's practice through a vast corpus of works from his main series of paintings of the past two decades. The catalogue, with the same title, includes a number of exhibition views, contains an interview and two essays that shed valuable light on the artist's approach to art and on a major work.
On display at CEAAC Strasbuourg and Atelier Meisenthal, the exhibiton has been concieved by GAM Torno and curated by Elena Volpato and Alice Motarduna, director of CEAAC. The project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (12th edition, 2023).

We tend to consider childhood as a golden age, a period of life that we should look back on with nostalgia, as a carefree and joyful time. Infinita infanzia (Infinite childhood) offers a reading that goes beyond this cliché. underlining the complexity of childhood, and its confusion of discovery and trauma, play and disobedience, lightness of heart and anxiety. Through a succession of rooms, the works of twenty-three artists address some of the key aspects of childhood: these different voices are held together by a theme that does not refer to any historical time, but that crosses all eras and sensitivities.

Caretto/Spagna are precursors of ecologically engaged artistic practices. They see art as a radical experience of openness, undisciplinated research and involvement with the “things” of the world: the earth, seeds, people, stones, the museum, the river, the quarry, the tree, micro-organisms. Bright Ecologies traces and documents twenty years of their work, structured in research involving care, the transformation of matter, and experiments with form, through practices based on encounter, process, parcticipation and co-authorship.

Costruzione dell'Universo: Artists’ Magazines and Publications after Marcel Duchamp is a research project that gathers artists’ magazines and publications by various artists who were active in the realm of “periodical and irregular” printed matter from the 1950s to the present day, beginning with of the work of the visionary artist Marcel Duchamp. This significant and hitherto overlooked sector of artistic production explores the dimension of the newspaper and magazine as an artistic medium. The selection includes extremely rare, a-periodic, and extraordinary printed items, “sensitive” publications in which the artist first handedly draws and designs the cover, the inner pages, the image sequence, or conceives the overall form of the object as a unique, yet replicable work. The publication in this context is sometimes transformed into an open and collective container, capable of engaging and coordinating multiple artists in the same layout or across different issues. The title “Construction of the Universe” points out to the fundamental and pioneering role of the early 20th-century avant-garde movement, referencing the 1915 Manifesto “Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe”, the notorious artistic manifesto that was initially released as a flyer and resembled newspaper layout. The 1950s (when our research for this book began) saw a significant rise of a utopian perspective in which artists, finally liberated from the existential weight of world conflicts, often envisioned the creation of a new society, free of relics and debris, made of travelling architectures and wide open spaces, new languages, and characterized by a deep longing for emptiness, a thrust toward the brightness of the future and the cosmos.

Alessandro Saturno lives the landscape through the body, his memory and his experience, transposing trhough painting the concept of paesagire (landscape-action) that Andrea Zanzotto introduced in his poetry. The poet’s harsh struggle against a progresso scorsoio (‘sliding progress’) shows us the landscape as an essential condition for life and art. The poet described the landscape of his childhood, which reflected his relationship with his father and was a crucial influence in his developement as a man. The same goes for Saturno, with Naples and its sea becoming the ‘threshold’ of his works: a passage to a world that is real and ideal at the same time; a world that serves as both culture and dream; a wordl of the sould after also having been a world of experience; a place you know but do not know what to call. A nameless place.

Da Monterrey a Monteluco, a solo exhibition by Calixto Ramírez, is the result of the Mexican artist’s residency in Spoleto and around monteluco, a hill covered with dense forest that rises to the south-east of the city. During his stay, the artist created a series of works deriving from his direct contact with the natural landscape in this location. The exhibition is a tribute to Monteluco itself: to the strenght of nature – sometimes enveloping or overwhelming, sometimes more calm and measured – and to the relationship between the elements of the landscape and the artist’s ability to interpret it, as he interacts with the natural setting in a visceral way, which is always poetic and at times playful.

La sostanza agitata exhibits the work of eleven artists under age 35 who share an interest in installational and plastic aspects, as well as the interaction between the work and the context in which it is displayed. The title refers to the experimental and hardly classifiable nature of the works on display, the diversity of the materials used, and an approach that declares an explicitly sculptural derivation between lightness and monumentality, irony, and issues that reflect the social changes in place. La sostanza agitata wishes to distinguish itself as a construction site of proposals, some of which are unpublished and made on site, a laboratory open to different perspectives: each artist is assigned a room, allowing the visitor to immerse themselves in the individual poetic, between organic and industrial materials, verticality and horizontality, movement and stillness, works formed from unique pieces and others that tend to spread up to a real multiplication. Catalog of the exhibition La sostanza agitata, a curated by Saverio Verini, artists: Francesco Bendini, Paolo Bufalini, Lucia Cantò, Giovanni de Cataldo, Binta Diaw, Bekhbaatar Enkhtur, Roberta Folliero, Jacopo Martinotti, Lulù Nuti, Giulia Poppi, Davide Sgambaro, 24 June – 16 October2023, Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto (PG).

Launched on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, the project is the result of a profound analysis and reflection that involved various experts and scholars as well as photography experts from the ICCD and looks at the world of the Poet in a completely new way: it focuses on the objects, landscapes and other natural elements that Dante Alighieri deals with in his major works. The luminous and photographic narrative comes to life through a meticulous reconstruction of images and optical illusions from the three Canticles, with the aid of early analogue photographic processes. The works on display have become part of the contemporary photography collections of the ICCD and are enclosed in a volume named after the exhibition, published by Viaindustriae Publishing, which is the result of extensive research into typographic printing materials and techniques. The project was supported by the National Committee for the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death. The photographs of the animals were realised thanks to the collaboration of the Civic Museum of Zoology in Rome.

Global migration is one of the most pressing matters facing contemporaneity, but also a leitmotif in the work of Massimo Ricciardo. In his most recent project, the artist creates a dialogue between photographic objects from the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and objects of migration: things that are functional to the journey, such as passports and nautical charts, but also to identity and memory, such as family photographs, diaries, a sample of earth from the homeland. The installation generated compelling questions about these ‘talking’ objects: who do they belong to? Are they part of our cultural heritage? What are the appropriate artistic and curatorial practices if one decides to collect, archive, exhibit, transform them? The dialogues prompted by Ricciardo’s installation continue in this book and involve a polyphony of voices.

What’s your idea of a natural place? Starting from this question, addressed to a heterogeneous audience, of different ages, professions and nationalities, Claudia Losi has put together Being There. Oltre il giardino (Beyond the Garden), the last chapter of a twenty-year-long research project focusing on that interweaving of meaning, perception and memory that humans deploy when looking at the world. In conducting her investigation, Losi hybridizes sociological-scientific language with artistic language, translating the many responses to her question (about four hundred, collected through an open call and a series of seminars) into images and drawings woven on an 18-meter tapestry. The work graphically synthesizes the contributions collected during the various stages of the research, constituting a visual diary between word and drawing. This book brings together a series of traces in the form of textual contributions, drawings and photographic documentation of the journeys and works that made up the project. Texts by Giorgio Vallortigara, Mauro Sargiani, Ugo Morelli, Riccardo Komesar, Cesare Raimondi, Gioia Laura Iannilli, Alice Benessia.

Bibliothèque d’un Amateur. Richard Prince’s Publications takes a look at Richard Prince’s library and production of artist’s books published between 1980 and 2020. This book is not a proper catalogue raisonné, but rather an invitation to browse the library of an amateur’s. It allows us to consider this important aspect of Richard Prince’s work, addressing books as well as the notion of a collection and its incompleteness, revealed here by the “ghosts” of missing books. Richard Prince is an avid book designer and collector; this zeal and fervor transpire in many book works where he photographs books from his collection, transforming a publication in an infinite library. Bibliothèque d’un Amateur is also the catalogue of the exhibition “ALL BOOKS AND SOME PRINTS” at Centre de la Photographie Genève (16 March–30 May 2021). 

Pink for Flower is the first in-depth international publication about the work of Italian artist Caterina Silva. The book is a comprehensive, polyphonic canon spanning over a decade of the artist’s practice with written contributions by a selection of curators, artists, poets, writers and academics from across a range of disciplines. The 178-page book will be published and distributed across UK Europe as 500 coloured soft-cover copies by Bosse&Baum and the prestigious Italian publishing house, visual art research centre, archive and exhibition space, Viaindustriae. Caterina Silva (1983, Rome) is a visual artist based between Rome and London working with painting and performance.  She uses painting to probe at the obscure spaces of the mind, those which are impossible to explain in words. She creates open images available to the interpretation of the observer, a consequence of a process of deconstruction of her own internal superstructure carried out through the matter of painting itself and its translation into choreographic experiments and performances. The list of collaborators includes curator Laura Smith, independent writer and curator Marta Federici, choreographer and dance-maker Cristina Kristal Rizzo, artist Bea McMahon, indologist, academician, one of the major experts of tantric shaivism and Hindu aesthetics Raffaele Torella, and researcher of radical psychiatry, Hannah Proctor.  

Second edition of Yes Yes Yes Revolutionary Press in Italy from Mondo Beat to Zut, this time with a white softcover and dusk jacekt. Densely filled with reproductions of newspapers, magazines, mimeographs, news-sheets, pamphlets, and other ephemera, this book investigates the Italian scene during the turbulent years between 1966 and 1977. These revolutionary printing activities were linked to the political, ideological, and countercultural struggle of a period of protest and occupation of public spaces as areas of freedom and social creativity for a disillusioned generation. A selection of over 600 publications are catalogued in this book, output from the subversive newsrooms of the radical artistic and libertarian movements, and “ultra-political” groups, autonomists, and other collectives seeking change.