exhibitions

exhibition05 June 2025 Francesco Simeti in the group show Material Witnesses at the American College of Greece in Athens Francesco Simeti is taking part in the group exhibition Material Witnesses, curated by Tamara Chalabi, at the American College of Greece in Athens, from June 5 to July 12.

Clay and textile—two of humanity’s most ancient and eloquent materials—serve as profound witnesses to human experience. Through impression, weave, and mark, these materials preserve intimate traces of touch and intention, creating permanent records of gesture across time. This exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists from the Mediterranean, Middle East, and their diasporas who harness these materials’ inherent capacity for memory and testimony.

Francesco Simeti’s deeply layered works draw on social, philosophical, and environmental discourses, particularly exploring water’s dual nature through site-specific digital collages and textile installations. Through layered imagery that incorporates historical and contemporary sources, his works map the transformation of natural landscapes, using fabric’s inherent mutability to reflect on ecological shifts and human intervention. exhibition26 May 2025 Geneva art gallery L'Appartement presents Claudio Massini at June Art Fair in Basel For the June Art Fair 2025, L’Appartement is pleased to present a solo exhibition of rare paintings made between 2004 and 2010 by the Italian artist Claudio Massini. These historical works showcase his hallmark technique across various media: intimate panel pieces rendered in mixed pigments on marine plywood are shown alongside expansive compositions on double-boiled, triple-washed linen, all painted with his signature palette of ground mineral, vegetable, and organic pigments. Recurring motifs—stars, chalices, garlands, and other symbolic forms—appear throughout the works, often elaborated and repeated in obsessive but never-identical series. Together, they offer a compelling view of Massini’s immersive, meditative visual language.

Born in Trieste in 1955, Massini relocated to Naples in the mid-1970s to pursue studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. He now lives and works in Treviso, Italy. His early exposure to both classical traditions and modernist movements laid the groundwork for his innovative approach to painting and mixed media. His art is characterised by rhythmic patterning, intricate surfaces, and a meticulous layering of pigments and materials, resulting in paintings that verge on the sculptural—rich in both visual and tactile depth.

Massini’s style defies easy classification. Describing his approach as “meta-historical,” he conjures a visual realm that fuses timeless iconography with contemporary material processes. Ethereal church spires, blossoms, maritime vessels, vials, amphorae, and antique goblets appear against matte, lacquered backdrops, transforming everyday or folkloric subjects into enchanted forms. His compositions pulse with energy, drawing the viewer into a dialogue between simplicity and complexity, repetition and variation, chaos and order.
Central to Massini’s artistic philosophy is his meditative process. He engraves fine, repetitive lines and curves into each surface with near-trance-like focus, reflecting on universal symbols that transcend time and space. This deep engagement with the physicality of the medium produces works that feel experiential as much as visual—compositions that echo natural cycles and invite quiet contemplation.

Massini’s work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including Cassina Projects, Milan (November 2025); Forma Gallery, Paris (2023); Kunsthalle Budapest, Hungary (2005); MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy (2003); and the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria (2000), among others.

This presentation at the June Art Fair offers a rare opportunity to encounter Massini’s early 21st-century works in a focused context—revealing the continuity of his vision and reaffirming his position as a singular voice in contemporary Italian painting.

(press release) exhibition14 May 2025 Gian Maria Tosatti and Adji Dieye at the 24th Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala City Gian Maria Tosatti and Adji Dieye are among the participating artists at the 24th Paiz Art Biennial in Guatemala City. The event is curated by Italian curator and Artistic Director of the MAMBO (Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá), Eugenio Viola.

"The World Tree" is the title of the Biennial. “The World Tree” is conceived as a polyphonic project that engages with the artistic ecosystem of Guatemala and Mesoamerica, reaffirming art’s ability to bridge distant worlds. In a global context marked by tensions and conflicts, this Biennial stands as a symbol of art’s potential to cultivate understanding, celebrate diversity, and promote unity and inclusion.

A pioneer in the advancement and development of art in Central America, the Paiz Art Biennial is one of
the region’s most significant contemporary art event since 1978, making it the sixth oldest Biennial
in the world and the second oldest in Latin America. The Biennial is a cultural
project of Fundación Paiz, a non-profit organization that, for over forty years, has supported the
development of education and culture in Guatemala, with the conviction that art is an essential tool
for social development.

Additional participants will be announced in the coming months. exhibition13 May 2025 Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives Elisabetta Benassi, Rossella Biscotti, Denicolai & Provoost, Tiziana Pers, and Marta Roberti are the Italian artists participating in the group exhibition "Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives" at the EMST Museum in Athens, curated by Katerina Gregos, from May 16, 2025, to February 15, 2026.

The exhibition focuses on animal rights and welfare, highlighting the need to recognize and defend the lives of non-human animals in an anthropocentric world that marginalizes, oppresses, and brutalizes them. The show draws inspiration from John Berger’s seminal text of the same name, “Why Look at Animals?” (1980), which explores the human-animal relationship in modernity and how animals have been marginalized in human societies. Featuring over 60 artists from four continents and more than 200 works occupying all floors of the museum, Why Look at Animals? is the largest exhibition ever organized by EMST and the first major international exhibition on non-human animal rights.

In the image: Tiziana Pers, Saut dans le vide (still), 2016, Courtesy of the artist. exhibition08 May 2025 Italian Drawings on the Far East Exhibition of drawings by Italian artists dedicated to the great explorer Marco Polo on the 700th anniversary of his death, curated by Angela Tecce, from May 8 to July 31, 2025 at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou.

Through a refined selection of works on paper by 44 artists, Le Divisament dou Monde brings together a series of drawings by Italian artists—from established masters to the most interesting and acclaimed emerging talents—in a journey that explores the visual, cultural, and symbolic influence of the Far East on contemporary Italian art.

The choice of such a specific medium—drawing—is also inspired by China’s profound tradition and sensitivity toward drawing and calligraphy, an attention that neither technological advancements nor the relative openness toward more Western visual forms have managed to diminish. Drawing and works on paper continue to hold a status of the highest importance, and even in their most recent variations and experimentations, they remain a mirror of contemporary Chinese culture.

Some of the works were created specifically for this project, conceived as a tribute to the spirit of exploration, observation, and knowledge that drove Marco Polo’s journey.

The exhibition is organized by the Fondazione Garuzzo, with the support of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Embassy of Italy in Beijing, the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing, and the Italian Cultural Institute in Shanghai. In collaboration with ICCF – Italy China Council Foundation and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in China. With the contribution of FlyRen Energy Group.

Image: Flavio Favelli, Blue Willow, 2025, Courtesy Francesca Minini Gallery exhibition05 May 2025 "Undless Sunday". Maurizio Cattelan and the Centre Pompidou Collection at Centre Pompidou-Metz To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is inviting the general public to take a vertiginous dive into the history of art and contemporary thought through the "Endless Sunday", an exceptional exhibition that will be taking over the entire museum. More than 400 works from the collections of the Centre Pompidou will be subjected to the implacable gaze of Maurizio Cattelan,while in addition, some thirty works by the Italian artist will offer a lucid, melancholic examination of modern mythologies.

Structured like an ABC, the exhibition alternates iconic works and unexpected pieces, creating transhistorical dialogues. Berger&Berger’s immersive exhibition design transforms the museum into a circular trail, echoing cycles of time as well as the architecture of Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines. exhibition22 April 2025 Giorgia Garzilli at Plymouth Rock, Zurich GIORGIA GARZILLI
Close but no cigar

April 26 - June 28, 2025
Opening Friday, April 25 18 - 20h

Giorgia Garzilli paints desire. To have and to hold and to see and depict. The paradoxes of critique become the paintings themselves. These stretched fabric objects, lathered with pigment, aspired for in the same ways as the images rendered and the ambitions the images represent. Her works are aware of their place in the luxuries of our world, a reflexivity that allows them to enjoy themselves and us them, yet always leaving friction that we might contemplate the why. Like Steinbeck’s “The Pearl of the World”, born from grit into something staggering of yearning and attraction, Garzilli’s painting offers up quests for opulence and possible cost. Visualizing what our values really might be. exhibition22 April 2025 Carlotta Amanzi for Hauser & Wirth Invite(s) in Paris Carlotta Amanzi, born in Sanremo in 2000, lives and works in Bologna. She is currently holding a solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Paris as part of Hauser & Wirth Invite(s)—a program dedicated to hosting artists, galleries, and writers in the mega-gallery’s Paris space, offering visibility to their work and ideas while engaging with the city’s vibrant creative community.

She graduated in 2024 with an MA in Painting and Visual Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Recent exhibitions include Dorsale, Lo Brutto Stahl, Paris (2024), Missed Timing, Pilot, Gallery Ann Mazzotti, Basel (2024), and Air Service Basel, Basel (2024). The artist will also participate in Air Service Basel 2025 with Lo Brutto Stahl, Basel (June 2025). exhibition21 April 2025 Lula Broglio da Duve Berlin Lula Broglio at Duve Berlin
From May 2 to June 27, 2025 exhibition21 April 2025 Giulia Mangoni ad Art Brussels 2025 For Art Brussels 2025, from April 24 to 27, ArtNoble Gallery presents "Rainbowmagicland," a new and unpublished series by Italo-Brazilian artist Giulia Mangoni (1991).
"Rainbowmagicland" is a transitional, hermetic space — a murky zone of transformation — where one of Mangoni’s research-based projects of the last few years finds its natural end, leaving a fruitful painterly environment that brings forth a more personal journey of familiar representation. exhibition18 April 2025 Edoardo Tresoldi among the 5 artists invited to the competition for the Lamb of the Sagrada Familia The Casa de la Almoina inaugurates an exhibition with five artistic proposals for the Lamb on the tower of Jesus Christ. Edoardo Tresoldi is among the five international artists invited to propose a work for the Lamb.

The exhibition center Museu Diocesà de Barcelona, also known as Casa de la Almoina, presents until June 9, 2025, the exhibition dedicated to the five artistic proposals to complete the tower of Jesus Christ of the Sagrada Familia. The work will be placed inside the cross at the top of the tower and will represent the Lamb of God.

This is an essential element that Antoni Gaudí had described in his projects for the Basilica, as evidenced in the Temple Albums, published by the association for the development of the Temple while the architect was alive, where there is an explicit reference to the Lamb of God.

The proposals of five international artists

On September 20, 2023, the Board of Directors of the Junta Constructora de la Sagrada Família decided to announce a competition for the submission of artistic proposals conceived for the Lamb (Agnus Dei). The artistic selection committee invited the Italians Edoardo Tresoldi and Andrea Mastrovito, whose work was chosen for realization, the Portuguese David Oliveira, and the Spaniards Gonzalo Borondo and Jordi Alcaraz to participate in the competition.

Edoardo Tresoldi’s proposal

Edoardo Tresoldi proposed a sculptural work interpreting the triumphant and risen Lamb, evoking the mystery of death and resurrection.
In the Apocalypse of Saint John, the Lamb is described as slain but victorious, at the center of the heavenly throne and keeper of divine knowledge. The sculpture is conceived to develop inside an octagonal-based parallelepiped wrapped in a silvery mist that expands like an exploded crystal.
The Lamb, standing, crosses a pillar of light descending from the sky. The mist clears revealing the presence of an empty space, shaped like an egg, symbol of life beyond sacrifice. Tresoldi conceives this geometric structure as an organism of light that hides and reveals at the same time, in a play of transparencies and reflections.
The central components of the work are made of metal mesh with mirrored inserts, creating a dialogue between matter and luminosity. The metallic panels supporting it are integrated into a monometric whole, where light defines the meaning of the work and transforms the tower into a symbol of transcendence and hope. exhibition16 April 2025 Rosa Barbara at Moma New York Rosa Barba inaugurates on May 3 a solo exhibition at MoMA New York, titled The Ocean of One's Pause. For Rosa Barba, cinema “allows time and space to vibrate, collapse, overlap, and extend.” Barba’s conceptual explorations of cinema probe historical documents, personal narratives, and the sensory experience of celluloid, often documenting natural landscapes and human-caused environmental changes. This installation embraces 15 years of Barba’s work, featuring films, kinetic sculptures, and sounds. A recently commissioned work, Charge, forms the core of the installation and examines light as a source of ecological change and scientific innovation.

These works are accompanied by a series of performances conceived by Barba as an “exploded poem.” In each event, the sound frequencies of percussionist Chad Taylor, vocalist Alicia Hall Moran, and Rosa Barba herself will activate a symphony of images throughout the installation. For over 15 years, Rosa Barba has explored the boundaries between cinema, body, and human voice through immersive performances that fuse film, installations, music, and text. The Ocean of One’s Pause continues her use of audio as a means for image creation and material to shape space. “A film is a performer,” Barba declares. “By manipulating aspects of projector operation, I seek to introduce the relationship between the projected image and the mechanics of projection, setting up a series of stages… charged with electricity.” Rather than playing a supporting role to the moving image, in this work Barba places sound at the center of the scene, creating a live collaboration of light, voice, rhythm, and film that emphasizes the interdependence of each.

Coinciding with the exhibition, Barba curated a film selection including some drawn from MoMA’s collection. Carte Blanche: Rosa Barba presents avant-garde and experimental films and videos that have influenced her career. In these works, landscapes marked by extraction and urban expansion are dotted with radical possibilities, journeys of transformation traced through otherworldly realities, and language becomes a visual and physical material that can fragment, vibrate, or be launched into space. This series, spanning diverse genres and formats over nearly 70 years, outlines the contours of Barba’s unique practice through moving image works that inspired her conceptual approach to cinema.

The exhibition is organized by Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance, with Gee Wesley, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance. The performances are produced by Kate Scherer, Senior Manager and Producer, with Jessie Gold, Assistant Performance Coordinator, Performance and Live Programs.
Music arranged and performed by Rosa Barba (cello), Alicia Hall Moran (voice), and Chad Taylor (percussion). Audio engineering by Sascha von Oertzen.

On view on the 2nd floor, room 213, Rosa Barba’s film installation Aggregate States of Matter is exhibited in the museum’s collection. With this installation, the artist asks: How can a form of visual expression convey the environmental and social impact of such a thorny issue as climate change?
For this work, the artist interviewed members of the Quechua indigenous communities in Peru, who have had to adapt their daily practices due to the melting of a nearby glacier. Abandoning journalistic conventions such as voice-over narration, the artist weaves text and images of the country’s vast territory. In doing so, she questions the traditional nature-culture binary, engaging with philosophical, spiritual, and cultural approaches to environmental change and time simultaneously.
Through the technology employed, Barba also explores how cinema archives and transmits knowledge and information; her use of celluloid — an increasingly obsolete material that degrades with every pass through a projector — resonates with the fragility of cultural memory and the natural landscape.

The installation in the museum collection is organized by Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs.

Rosa Barba (born in Agrigento, 1972. Lives and works in Berlin)
Rosa Barba’s artistic practice addresses various dichotomies, exploring themes of permanence versus impermanence, reality versus fiction, and the interaction between language and time. Through film, sculpture, installations, and performance, her research investigates how temporal and linguistic constructs shape space, challenging linear narratives and traditional semiotics. Barba deconstructs cinematic elements to examine the intersections of physical materials such as projectors and film reels with abstract concepts like time, space, and sound. Her work often focuses on natural landscapes and human interventions, blurring the boundaries between historical documentation, personal narrative, and artistic representation. Her work is part of numerous international collections, and her recent solo exhibitions include: MALI Museum, Lima, Peru (2024); Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam (2024); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023); Tate Modern, London (2023); PICA, Perth, Australia (2023); Villa Medici, Rome (2022); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2021–2022); and various Biennials, including the 53rd and 56th Venice Biennale, São Paulo (2016), Sydney (2014), and Performa (2013). Barba received the Calder Prize in 2020 and the International Contemporary Art Prize from the Fondation Prince Pierre of Monaco in 2015. exhibition01 April 2025 Luca Dal Vignale at 12 Antwerp Known for his dreamlike, almost cinematic compositions, Antwerp-based Italian artist Luca Dal Vignale blends elements of classical painting with contemporary narratives, crafting evocative and layered visual worlds. His works explore themes of memory, nostalgia, and fleeting moments of beauty, making them both timeless and deeply personal.

Luca Dal Vignale discovered his passion for art at the age of 18 in the atelier of a painter in La Spezia, Italy. His early work was deeply influenced by expressionist painting, which he explored while studying at the Academy of Carrara. Later, in Brussels, he pursued a double master’s degree in painting and tapestry, where his practice evolved into a more physical and material approach. Moving beyond traditional painting, he experimented with textiles - collaging, sewing, draping, and stretching fabric to create spatial compositions. In Antwerp, Luca further expanded his artistic vocabulary through performative, sculptural, and installation-based works. However, a deep sense of nostalgia led him back to painting, the medium he finds most expressive and liberating.

12 is initiated by AIM Architecture, a global architecture and design studio known for its bold, immersive spatial experiences. With this space, AIM wants to create more than just a gallery - it’s a living, evolving platform where art, design, and culture intersect in meaningful ways. Whether through exhibitions, collaborations, or spontaneous encounters, our goal is to make 12 a place where ideas take shape, new conversations begin, and creative energy flows freely.

April​ 3​ - 11​, 2025​
https://www.12antwerp.com/ exhibition29 March 2025 Francesco Vezzoli's first museum solo show in China The Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai announces the first-ever museum exhibition in China by Italian artist and filmmaker Francesco Vezzoli. "Divas," opening to the public on March 30–June 2, pays homage to the enduring legacy of European and American cinema and the cultural weight of 20th-century stardom and historical cinematic movements. Through his embroideries of “divas,” Vezzoli disrupts the fantasy of iconic movie stars and opera primadonnas by exposing the delicate reality beneath the surface.

Spanning 25 years of Vezzoli’s artistic production, each embroidery work in this show is matched with
the poster of a significant film featuring the actor portrayed – such as Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren, and Silvana Mangano – and bridges Vezzoli’s deeply personal cinematic history with the collective
imagination shaped by film.

The pairing of embroidery and poster along two long corridors invites viewers to engage with both the historical and emotional dimensions of cinema and offers a layered perspective on the relationship between stardom and artistic interpretation. By blending classic narratives with emotional introspection, the exhibition highlights cinema’s enduring influence on Vezzoli’s vision and the cultural landscape at large. The exhibition is curated by Nancy Spector and Shai Baitel.

Vezzoli examines the fetishism surrounding the movie industry’s star system and cinematic styles such as Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and Spanish Surrealism to reveal the malleability of history and performative nature of fame. By inserting his own mark on these recognizable portraits, Vezzoli also pays homage to his personal experience growing up watching these films and how they shaped his own reality and challenges cultural nostalgia that surrounds these icons. exhibition19 March 2025 Arcangelo Sassolino at the MONA Museum of Old and New Art, Australia Italian sculptor Arcangelo Sassolino will present his first solo exhibition in Australia at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) from 7 June 2025–6 April 2026. From dripping metal to splintering wood, in the end, the beginning features a selection of kinetic sculptures that push matter to their edges, and premieres during Dark Mofo, as Tasmania’s midwinter solstice festival returns in full this year.

The exhibition’s title piece, in the end, the beginning, will see one of Mona’s subterranean galleries showered with molten steel. Heated to 1500°C, the liquid metal creates dramatic firelight sparks as it drips down from the ceiling. This work is a reimagining of the artist’s renowned installation Diplomazija astuta, originally created for the Malta Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, where Sassolino used the light of melted steel to evoke the chiaroscuro in Caravaggio’s 1608 altarpiece painting The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.

Sassolino has scaled up his interest in mechanics and technology, creating dynamic sculptures that test the laws of physics. Known for complex kinetic works, automata and installations, he uses force, tension, speed, heat and gravity to create dramatic transformations in his—often industrial—materials, along with a sense of danger and suspense. The persistent effort required to sustain existence is an intrinsic element of his work. All Sassolino’s sculptures incorporate a sort of countdown mechanism, reinforcing a reflection on time as an integral part of the experience, heightening anticipation and emphasising the ephemeral nature of material states and motion.

At Mona, Sassolino will present five additional sculptures alongside in the end, the beginning that highlight his relentless exploration of matter and its physical limits. This includes violenza casuale, a work in which wooden beams, bound by steel cables, are continuously crushed by hydraulic pressure causing them to splinter and disintegrate. A similar interplay of tension and fragility is seen in the paradoxical nature of life where a pane of glass bows under the weight of a large boulder. The sculpture marcus shows a tyre squeezed and warped out of shape, while no memory without loss features two three-metre discs slowly rotating on the wall, trickling industrial oil down the centre of the disc.

"in the end, the beginning" will be presented from 7 June 2025 to 6 April 2026.

Photo credit: Ginevra Formentini exhibition10 March 2025 Alessandro Di Pietro in residence at Gasworks in London From January 6 to March 24, 2025, Alessandro Di Pietro is in residence at Gasworks in London. On March 15, there will be an Open Studio from 12 to 6 pm, with an artist presentation at 2 pm.

Alessandro Di Pietro creates sculptures, films, and installations that resist notions of synthesis or completeness, often drawing on the structures of narrative cinema and the blurred imagery of science fiction. He blends artistic and biographical references to construct shifting and distorted realities within his works. In his recent project Ghostwriting Paul Thek, Di Pietro produced new artworks that he posthumously attributed to artist Paul Thek (1933–1988), merging fact and fiction to highlight the relationships between the late artist and other contemporary artists.

During his residency, Alessandro has developed a new work centered on an imaginary dialogue between two familiar figures from the worlds of art and music: artist Marcel Duchamp and Brian Molko, lead singer of the British alternative rock band Placebo. The dialogue between these two characters takes place as they bet on a “rat race” and playfully examines the tensions and contradictions of living in a post-capitalist society.

Alessandro Di Pietro’s residency is supported by Fondazione Memmo. exhibition01 March 2025 Enrico David represented by White Cube White Cube announces its representation of the London-based Italian artist Enrico David (born 1966 in Ancona, Italy), in collaboration with Michael Werner Gallery.

The artist’s first exhibition with the gallery will open in October 2025 at White Cube Paris, coinciding with his retrospective at the Castello di Rivoli (29 October 2025 – 22 March 2026). Selected works will also be on view at White Cube’s booth at Art Basel Hong Kong (28–30 March 2025, booth 1C23).

“Over nearly four decades, David has developed a distinctive visual lexicon that explores bodily transformations, investigating its countless manifestations through an experimental approach to materials and forms,” states the gallery’s press release.

He has exhibited at major institutions worldwide, including significant retrospectives at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018), and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (2019). That same year, he was selected as one of three artists to represent Italy at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Furthermore: “Influenced by the language of dramatization and theatre, David’s multifaceted practice – spanning painting, sculpture, tapestry, and installation – draws from a wide range of sources, including visual fragments, literary, cinematic and art-historical references, as well as personal memory.
Born into a family of artisans, David moved to London in the late 1980s, earning a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. The influence of design and craft permeates his work, and in 1999 he debuted in a group show at the Saatchi Gallery with a series of large embroidered tapestries inspired by fashion photography. Among these, Stick of Rock (1999) features the silhouette of a figure subtly evoking both domestic craft and bondage, where the homely quality of pink wool meets references to latex suits or fetish wear. An early example of David’s fascination with the tension between identity and performance, the work marks the beginning of his ongoing inquiry into the self.
Characterized by surrealist detours or the shock of the grotesque, many of David’s sculptures and installations originate from his drawings. He develops these forms by modeling wax or clay, then casting them in bronze or polymer plaster, and later incorporating materials such as wood, steel, wool, sponge, and others.
A process involving iteration, translation, and transformation, David’s practice reflects a continual personal evolution – a transitional space from which open-ended questions constantly emerge.”

Image: Enrico David, photograph © White Cube (Eva Herzog) exhibition11 February 2025 Italian Ceramics from the MIC in Faenza to Poland The exhibition Mater Ceramica, Living and Contemporary Matter from MIC Faenza travels to Poland. From 13 February to 5 March, it will be on view at the Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw, and from 11 April to 15 June at the Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec. This initiative is part of the Italian Design Day 2025 program.

The exhibition narrates, through around twenty works from the MIC Faenza collection, the evolution of auteur ceramics—an artistic journey that is formal, technical, and poetic, beginning in the early 20th century and continuing into contemporary production.

The exhibition project begins in the Art Nouveau era, with works by Domenico Baccarini and Galileo Chini; Gio Ponti’s designs connected to major manufacturers such as Ginori; the eclectic Art Deco aesthetics of Arturo Martini and Francesco Nonni; and leads up to the truly contemporary language of the second half of the 20th century as seen in works by Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Leoncillo, Nanni Valentini, Antonia Campi, Carlo Zauli, Alfonso Leoni, Guerrino Tramonti, and Enrico Baj. Present-day ceramic production is represented by the hyperrealist works of Bertozzi & Casoni and the material investigations of Giacinto Cerone, Antonio Violetta, and Alessandro Roma.

“The space that major international exhibitions—such as the Venice Biennales—have given to ceramics in recent years is a response to the growing popularity it is enjoying among artists of all generations, both emerging and established masters,” commented Claudia Casali, director of MIC Faenza. “Today, ceramics is an artistic language that has overcome the long-standing 19th-century division between fine and applied arts.”

The exhibition is organized by the Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw and the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Faenza, and the Union of Romagna Faentina. exhibition24 January 2025 Lorenza Longhi at the Kunstverein Freiburg The Italian artist based in Zurich, Lorenza Longhi (born in 1991), represented by the Milanese gallery Fanta MLN, opens a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Freiburg in Germany on January 24. The show, titled Dazzle Dazzle, runs until March 9. exhibition24 January 2025 Arcangelo Sassolino, the only Italian artist at the 2nd Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah And All That Is In Between is the title of the second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah—a city that has historically served as a crossroads of cultures—organized by the Diriyah Biennale Art Foundation.
The exhibition will be open to the public from January 26 to May 25, 2025, at the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz Airport.

Curators of this major event are Julian Raby, Amin Jaffer in his role as Director of the Al Thani Collection, and Abdul Rahman Azzam, along with Saudi artist Muhannad Shono for the Contemporary Art section. The Biennale offers a unique perspective on how culture endures amid the sweeping transformations currently underway in Saudi Arabia, all within a broader framework of international reference points.

Arcangelo Sassolino is the only Italian artist invited by Muhannad Shono to create a site-specific work for the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. Shono and Sassolino met during the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, where Shono represented Saudi Arabia and Sassolino contributed to the Pavilion of Malta.

Memory of Becoming is the title of Arcangelo Sassolino’s installation conceived specifically for the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. Sassolino has carefully crafted this work to reflect the very essence of a Biennale that explores and celebrates the interconnections of art, culture, and spirituality.

ARCANGELO SASSOLINO
Memory of Becoming

And All That Is In Between
Islamic Arts Biennale

January 25 – May 25, 2025
Western Hajj Terminal, King Abdulaziz International Airport
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia exhibition15 January 2025 Lorenzo Puglisi at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York The first solo exhibition by Lorenzo Puglisi in New York will open on January 17 at the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue (on view until February 15). Painting in New York, curated by art critic Guicciardo Sassoli De Bianchi and inaugurated by the Institute's director, Fabio Finotti, features a selection of works created specifically for the event during the artist’s stay in the city. On view until February 15, the exhibition highlights the artist's iconographic vision and unmistakable style. Puglisi’s powerful and evocative figures emerge from dark backgrounds—an aesthetic that has brought him widespread recognition in recent years. His mysterious subjects, defined by distinctive brushstrokes in white and red tones, make their debut in the United States. Lorenzo Puglisi, who lives and works in Bologna, has developed a pictorial practice marked by the extensive use of black to create a backdrop of total darkness. From this darkness, bursts of light emerge, defining volumes, faces, and parts of the body—an exploration of the essential elements of representation, rich with references to the history of painting. In recent years, his artistic research has focused on large canvases referencing masterpieces of the past. His self-portrait has been added to the collection of the Uffizi Galleries, selected by director Eike Schmidt. The work is now part of the group of 255 pieces (ranging from the 1400s to the present) displayed in the newly installed twelve rooms of the Florentine museum, inaugurated on July 10, 2023. exhibition18 December 2024 Un'opera di Victor Fotso Nyie acquistata dal MASP di San Paolo The Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, Brazil, has acquired Victor Fotso Nyie's work, Malinconia (2020). Victor Fotso Nyie's artistic research focuses on the condition of contemporary African individuals, alienated and suffering due to an unresolved history of enslavement and exploitation. His sculptures, often crafted in ceramic, depict human figures interwoven with elements of daily life, creating a visual language that mirrors the complexity of South African society.

Characterized by symbolic and spiritual dimensions, his works reflect the duality of his experiences in Africa and Europe. This blend generates a nuanced and rich narrative, speaking to both his personal journey and universal human experiences.

The work acquired by the MASP with the generous support of Nádia and Olavo Setubal, portrays an expressive human face, emblematic of Fotso Nyie's exploration of themes of identity and memory. It was exhibited during the latest Venice Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa, marking a significant milestone in the artist's career. exhibition07 November 2024 Flaminia Veronesi in London for Selfridges’ Holiday Windows For its holiday windows this year, Selfridges has invited Flaminia Veronesi (b. 1986) to bring her touch to the Oxford Street department store in London. In each of the Play with Fantasy (2024) windows, Veronesi has created three parallel dimensions that explore the fantastic through different media and imaginaries, crafting a perfect atmosphere for the festive season.
“Flaminia Veronesi invites us to suspend disbelief, to enter a symbolic representation of our world, and to awaken to the Wonder that surrounds us,” reads the press release from Galleria Tommaso Calabro, which represents her. “Hybrid creatures and post-human landscapes suggest a vision of the world in which everything is interconnected and in constant transformation. Each of us, through the infinite transformative power of Play and Fantasy, can imagine and share new horizons and new ways for human beings to be a part of it.” exhibition30 October 2024 Screening and Lecture by Diego Marcon at Städelschule in Frankfurt On November 4–5, 2024, Diego Marcon


In the image: Diego Marcon, Dolle, 2023 (backstage photography), Ph. Chiara Fossati © Diego Marcon. Courtesy the artist exhibition13 October 2024 Marinella Senatore at Michel Rein in Paris Michel Rein is pleased to present Alliance des Corps, the inaugural solo exhibition of Marinella Senatore at the gallery (October 13th - December 21st, 2024). Throughout the gallery's spaces, the light works, collages, drawings, banners, and films express Marinella Senatore's creativity. Marinella Senatore has imposed a participatory art experimenting with the creative power of the collective.

Through The School of Narrative Dance, Marinella Senatore, opening a dialogue between history, culture, and social structures, has organized giant parades around the world (more than 7 million participants since 2012) mixing local communities, musicians, dancers, and activists. The banners hanging over visitors in the exhibition at the gallery come from these parades and recall the traditional processions of Southern Italy, where the artist is from, without their religious dimension.

Marinella Senatore's work is a call to «build community». Marinella Senatore invites us, through dance, to use our body, in its fragility and singularity, as a means of resistance. This common need to weave a new social bond through bodily expression appears in all of the artist's practices. The messages written on her installations and her luminous works are injunctions to come together, become one, celebrate life, beyond our differences. Creativity appears in all its forms in the collages on gold leaf. The collages take up all the iconographic elements that reflect the artist's desire for otherness.

Among these elements, music is a primary source of inspiration. A graduate of the Avellino Conservatory of Music (Italy), Marinella Senatore played as a violinist in an orchestra. Marinella Senatore's drawings, displayed on the first floor of the gallery, refer to major historical events where citizens came together to fight for their rights. These great moments of social cohesion, driven by a utopian desire to change the balance of power and allow access to active citizenship, are essential sources of inspiration for the parades that Marinella Senatore creates throughout the world.

This political vision is further affirmed in the film "Nui simu", 2010, presented at the 54th Venice Biennale. The project, born from a collaboration with retired miners from the Sicilian city of Enna and students from the University of Catania, took the form of a month-long open workshop during which the various protagonists shared their knowledge, hopes, and fears, setting up a utopian community where everyone emerged stronger.

Marinella Senatore's works will also be exhibited at the gallery's booth at Art Basel Paris from October 16 to 20. exhibition04 October 2024 Diego Marcon's first solo show in Austria Kunsthalle Wien presents Diego Marcon's solo exhibition "La Gola", from October 4th, 2024 to February 2nd, 2025. Diego Marcon’s work draws upon different cinematic vocabularies from diverse genres including musicals, melodrama, horror and slapstick comedy. His uncanny, singular imagery employs various technical devices such as robotics, prosthetics and CGI. Words, sounds and gestures contribute to the troubling uncertainty or ambiguity that underpins Marcon’s work.

La Gola (2024) is structured by a series of letters between two correspondents, Gianni and Rossana. Over the course of eight letters, Gianni describes the successive courses of an exquisite banquet, while Rossana gives an account of the progressive decline of her mother’s health. The two characters are played by hyperrealistic mannequins, that appear motionless with their eyes modelled and animated in CGI. Their voices are accompanied by an original score composed by Federico Chiari. The music was performed on a Pietro Corna organ and recorded at the Cattedrale di Sant’Alessandro Martire in Bergamo. Drawing upon themes familiar from art history, Marcon playfully combines graphic accounts of cuisine and disease against an elaborate and energetic score, using language, voices and music to create dramatic tension.

Produced in partnership with Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and Kunstverein in Hamburg, its presentation is Marcon’s first solo exhibition in Austria. This exhibition is accompanied by a new book, jointly published by the three institutions with essays by Charlie Fox, Gianni Revello and Sofia Silva. exhibition29 July 2024 Ryts Monet shows for the first time in Argentina The Italian Cultural Institute of Buenos Aires has announced that Italian artist Ryts Monet will make his first appearance in Argentina as part of Bienalsur 2023, presenting his evocative work World Map (about sustainable fashion). The piece is featured in the group exhibition Rompecabezas (Puzzle), curated by Diana B. Wechsler and Benedetta Casini.

World Map critically examines the economic and political disparities in environmental relations. According to the press release, Ryts Monet "chose to depict the world map through a process of subtraction, wearing down and distressing a denim textile base to create the image of an exhausted Earth, now reduced to tatters." The work "aims to provoke questions about the impact of hyper-consumerist markets and large-scale resource extraction—both now and in the future—on local and global scales."

The piece was first exhibited at the Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte in Biella, Italy, and was created during Circulart 2, an artist residency program organized by the foundation, focusing on fashion and sustainability.

The exhibition—supported by the Embassy of Italy, Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte, and Officina+39—will open on July 29 at the Muntref Centro de Arte Contemporáneo y Museo de la Inmigración, located in Buenos Aires’ historic Hotel de Inmigrantes. exhibition27 July 2024 Francesca Leone, ambassador of Italian art at G20 Rome-based artist Francesca Leone has been selected by MAXXI Museum on behalf of Italy's Ministry of Culture to showcase her work at the upcoming G20 Summit in India, themed "One Earth, One Family, One Future." Her pieces will join those of 50 international artists in the exhibition "Together We Art" at Bihar Museum (Patna, August 7–23), before traveling to National Museum (New Delhi, September 7–October 7).

"I am deeply honored by this invitation," Leone told ANSA, "and grateful to the curators and MAXXI’s director for entrusting me with this role." Known for her use of reclaimed materials and environmental consciousness, Leone will present an installation of three giant steel roses—crafted from salvaged corrugated metal sourced from shacks and abandoned buildings—symbolizing humanity’s relationship with nature. The roses are in different shapes and colors: the largest rose is vibrantly painted and meticulously restored, representing nature healed through care; the middle rose is partially rusted with visible holes and tears, embodying partial or neglected intervention; the smallest rose is fully corroded, its form nearly dissolved, evoking irreversible decay. "This progression mirrors how artists transform materials—and how humanity can either nurture or abandon nature," Leone explained.

Titled 'A Rose is a Rose is a Rose' (after Gertrude Stein’s verse), the work embodies regeneration through reuse: the largest rose, once rusted, now blooms anew with applied color. Leone manipulates galvanized sheets—"alive and beautiful like skin, crumpled like paper"—to create deliberate dissonance: "The roses appear delicate as origami yet weigh heavy as iron, fragile yet enduring."

Exhibition curator Alka Pande emphasizes themes of tolerance, inclusivity, peaceful coexistence, and ecology—values central to Leone’s practice. The work’s layered meanings—care, redemption, and second chances—bridge human relationships and environmental stewardship (ANSA / Ida Bini) exhibition25 June 2024 Silvia Rosi Wins the C/O Berlin Talent Award Italian artist Silvia Rosi, born in 1992, has won the 2024 C/O Berlin Talent Award, presented by the German photography institution C/O Berlin for her work Protektorat, which will be showcased in a solo exhibition from February 1 to May 16, 2025. The other artists shortlisted for the 2024 edition were Salih Basheer (b. 1995, Sudan), Hiền Hoàng (b. 1990, Vietnam), Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990, USA), and Yao Yuan (b. 1988, China).

In Protektorat, Italian artist Silvia Rosi examines her Togolese roots and explores systems of communication and signs within colonial and hegemonic power structures. Drawing on archival material from the National Archives of Togo, she highlights the widespread imposition of Western systems during the colonial occupation of Togo by the German Reich, as well as British and French forces. Her artistic narrative unfolds through multiple visual forms and sensory layers: still and moving images accompanied by sound allow us to see and hear how local languages, traditions, and visual culture were overwritten and suppressed under colonialism. Rosi is always the protagonist of these works, powerfully inserting her personal experiences into collective history. The entire jury was impressed by Rosi’s complex aim of challenging "the documentary" in photography within the postcolonial discourse, using diverse and innovative approaches.

Silvia Rosi (b. 1992, IT) is an artist based between Lomé (Togo) and London (UK). In her practice, she uses photography and moving images to explore memory, oral histories, and (self-)representation. She earned a BA in Photography from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, in 2016. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as Collezione Maramotti (2024), the Brooklyn Museum (2024), CAMERA – Italian Center for Photography (2023), MAXXI (2022), MA*GA (2022), LACMA (2021), Les Rencontres d’Arles (2021), Autograph ABP (2021), and the National Portrait Gallery, London (2020). exhibition25 June 2024 A Video by Elisa Giardina Papa at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Elisa Giardina Papa’s video work, U Scantu: A Disorderly Tale, will be screened on June 26 at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt as part of their weekly film program, Double Feature.

“Elisa Giardina Papa is an Italian artist whose work explores gender, sexuality, and labor within the context of neoliberal capitalism and the Global South’s frontiers,” reads the press release. “Her current work documents how past and present forms of capitalism have progressively depleted all capacities for work and life — including sleep, affection, and emotion — and instead focuses on all that in our lives cannot be grasped, translated, or calculated. Her film U Scantu: A Disorderly Tale (2022, 13'06'') presents a reinterpretation of the Sicilian myth of the ‘donne di fora’ (‘women from outside and from beyond themselves’). These women were described as both magical and criminal and were said to combine the feminine and the masculine, the human and the animal, the benevolent and the vengeful.” exhibition14 June 2024 Luca Bertolo at Ceeac in Strasbourg and Meisenthal L'hésitation, curated by Elena Volpato

From 15 June until 8 September 2024, CEAAC presents a survey of the work of the Italian painter Luca Bertolo across two venues in Strasbourg and Meisenthal.

Luca Bertolo (b. 1968 in Milan, lives and works in Seravezza) is one of the most influential painters of his generation in Italy. He is widely respected not only for his painting practice, which challenges the very notion of pictorial style, but also for his writings and his dedicated work as a teacher at the Bologna School of Fine Arts.

Hesitation is a central concept in Bertolo’s work. In Strasbourg, a monographic exhibition will offer an overview of his practice through a vast corpus of works from his main series of paintings of the past two decades. In Meisenthal (Moselle), several series of drawings and photographs produced between 2002 and 2022, representing a lesser-known yet fundamental aspect of his creative research, will be displayed in a former painter’s studio.

Taking place simultaneously in two venues in the Grand Est region, this two-fold exhibition evidences Bertolo’s conception of painting as a practice in suspension, reflecting the artist’s reluctance to explicate the subject of representation and his predilection for oblique perspectives and multi-layered images that steer clear from any assumed form.

In partnership with GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin.

The project is supported by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council programme (12th edition, 2023), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide. exhibition15 February 2024 Tommaso Fiscaletti's exhibition in Cape Town This morning, the exhibition The Appearance (Hemelliggaam or the Attempt to Be Here Now) by Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler opened as part of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, organized with the support of the Italian Consulate in Cape Town and under the patronage of the Italian Cultural Institute in Pretoria. The opening was attended by Italian Ambassador to South Africa Alberto Vecchi and Consul in Cape Town Giulio Mignacca.

Fiscaletti, originally from Pesaro, Italy, is a photographer and visual artist who has been based in Cape Town for years, exhibiting and publishing in both Italy and South Africa. Since 2018, he has collaborated with South African artist Nic Grobler to create Hemelliggaam, a visual archive comprising photographs, videos, and installations.

The Appearance presents itself as a visual investigation of the ancestral relationship between humans, the environment, and astronomy. Rooted in 20th-century South African science fiction, the project explores the intersections between astronomical progress and everyday reality.

The works that make up Hemelliggaam—presented here under the title The Appearance—can be described as "encounters." The images depict places where nature, humans, artifacts, and technology take on meanings beyond their immediate appearance, converging through a mysterious, ancestral act of magic with the unsettling silence of the sky, the night, and the vast landscapes of South Africa’s far southeast.

Fiscaletti and Grobler act as conscious witnesses of these encounters, collecting evidence, seeking new ones, and endlessly scanning the skies—toward the stars and beyond—as if searching for gateways to other universes.

The exhibition is the result of years of collaboration between the Italian Consulate, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair—the most important contemporary art fair on the African continent, known for launching artists onto the international stage.

The Appearance will be on view at the Central Methodist Mission in Cape Town from February 16 to March 4, 2024. exhibition07 February 2024 Emanuele Marcuccio in Zurich From August 31, 2024
To November 2, 2024

Damien & The Love Guru Zurich agenda07 February 2024 Federica Di Carlo participates in Art D'Égypte exhibition06 February 2024 Sophie Ko's first exhibition in the United Kingdon The Consulate General of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in London are delighted to present the works of artist Sophie Ko for the first time in the United Kingdom, with two exhibition events curated by Elena Re at the Italian Cultural Institute in London and at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, and with the collaboration of Bologna’s Galleria de’ Foscherari.

Investigating her works like geographic maps, the audience will enjoy Ko’s paintings as different landscapes, where some works are made of ashes from burnt images, and others might contain pure pigments stratified in gold dust. Gravity is the main subject of this show, able to transform the paints over time, in a process that represents an expression of continual rebirth. As Elena Re, the curator, states: “With these works, Sophie Ko paved the way to her approach to conceiving figuration, coming up with something that straddles painting and sculpture, something that only time can draw”.

Geografia temporale by Sophie Ko and curated by Elena Re. From 6th to 19th of February at ICI London.