04 June 2025 Artforum, "Diana Anselmo" | 16 April 2025 Frieze, "Must-See: The Tears of Karl Lagerfeld" | 16 April 2025 Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, "Mit welcher Haltung kommt man in der Kunstwelt am weitesten, Maurizio Cattelan?" | 09 April 2025 The Berliner, "Consider Listening: An exhibition urging calm amidst outrage" | 02 April 2025 Wallpaper, "Aboard Gio Ponti's colourful Arlecchino train in Milan, a conversation about design with Formafantasma" | 26 March 2025 Frieze, "Diego Marcon’s Films Conjure a Familiar, Grotesque World" | 19 March 2025 Arts Hub, "1500-degree molten steel installation, inspired by Caravaggio, to drip from the ceiling of Mona" | 15 May 2024 Frieze, "Silvia Rosi Gives Voice to Her Parents’ Migration Story" | 30 March 2024 The Korea Times, "Foreigners Everywhere: Artist duo who inspired this year's Venice Biennale lands in Seoul" | 07 February 2024 Artnet News, "Ceramics Are as Contemporary as a Smartphone: Chiara Camoni on Her Tactile Sculptures"
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last update 16 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 Barba’s conceptual explorations of cinema probe historical documents, personal narratives, and the sensory experience of celluloid, often documenting natural landscapes and human-caused environmental changes.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.
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.
other exhibitions
all the 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.
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.