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Augustas Serapinas. Baltic Adventure

On a balmy October morning, I attended the opening of Augustas Serapinas’ solo exhibition “BALTIC ADVENTURE” at FOROF in Rome, an exhibition that will captivate audiences until June 30, 2024, complemented by a diverse program of cultural and artistic engagements. During this occasion, I had the privilege of engaging in a conversation with the artist. We delved into the intricate connections between the historic space and his contemporary creations, contemplating how art serves as a catalyst for fostering consciousness about our collective past, present, and future.
by Martina Alemani

Alessia Glaviano | PhotoVogue Festival 2023

Reverberating through the halls of BASE until November 19, 2023, the esteem PhotoVogue Festival emerges once more as a visual culture epicenter and a conscious exploration of contemporary fashion photography. At the helm of this venture are Alessia Glaviano, the luminary behind Global PhotoVogue, and a consortium of perceptive minds—Chiara Bardelli Nonino, Daniel Rodríguez Gordillo, Caterina De Biasio, and Francesca Marani—orchestrating the festival’s eighth edition.
by Lucrezia Musella

AnnaMaria Pinaka. stay with me, I’ll give you jewls

In celebration of today’s finissage for the exhibition “stay with me, I’ll give you jewls,” marking AnnaMaria Pinaka’s debut solo show within her native Greece, this review delves into the intricate tapestry of creatures, symbols, and languages that inhabit the artist’s poetics. Curated by Ioanna Gerakidi at Athens’ opbo studio, the exhibition serves as a gateway to a profound exploration of Pinaka’s body of work, offering insight into the various layers of subjectification and epistemic processes that the artist engages with.
by Simone Rossi

Sin Wai Kin | Dreaming the End

On a Spring morning I went visiting Sin Wai Kin’s solo show “Dreaming the End”, open through 29 October 2023, at Fondazione Memmo in Rome where I had the chance to chat with the artist and with the curator Alessio Antoniolli about obsessions and contradictions, fluidity of perspective, research and knowledge, context and transformations, the value of the dress and more.
by Martina Alemani

Monstrum Studio. Silhouettes of Eternity

On the occasion of its second participation at the Milan Design Week, MONSTRUM STUDIO staged at Alcova 2023 a project as fascinating as pre-apocalyptic: Solar Flare Sunset. About this, monstra and the future that this first collection of objects envisions, I talk with Riccardo Villa Fabbiati, architect and creative director of the Milan- and Paris-based design studio.
by Simone Rossi

Mark Flood. Pathways

On the occasion of Mark Flood’s solo exhibition “Battlefields” at Peres Projects, Milan, I had the chance to get closer to the American artist’s practice and exchange views on some of his key themes, such as social body monsters, idol formats, pathways. This meeting shed light on Flood’s poetics and relevance, while also delving into his collaboration with fashion.
by Martina Alemani

Under Trial | The 79th Venice International Film Festival

The just concluded 79th Venice International Film Festival shed light on an existence, ours, fully on trial. This text gathers first-hand impressions of who experienced it and attempts a synopsis of the main narrative trajectories that ran through the kermesse. Between courtrooms, emancipated children, rapacious love affairs and unprepared parents, this year’s cinema dares to unhinge taboos too often inviolate.
by Simone Rossi

Trajal Harrell. Sister or He Buried the Body

On a pleasant summer afternoon in Luxemburg, I experienced the world premiere of Trajal Harrell’s performance at the naturally lit Great hall of Mudam—sitting on a pillow in close proximity to the artist.
Between fantastical origins and the truth of fantasies, Trajal Harrell’s body draws out a pathway which departs from Haitian voodoo to arrive in post-Hiroshima Japan, during which combinations unveil the multiple layers that make up the history of dance.
by Martina Alemani

Eugenio Viola | Ekcentric Worlds

Imagining the dialogue as a peripatetic itinerary around the stages that have marked Eugenio Viola’s curatorial practice, the interview with the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Art Biennale 2022 provided an overview of his poetics, focusing on his artivist approach, on the South, and on his never-ending quest to challenge culture.
by Simone Rossi

Disclosure #04 | Arseny Zhilyaev

Disclosure is a focus on the artist’s studio, considered both as a place of physical and intellectual production and as an archive of languages and experimentations. The project, with photographs by Riccardo Banfi and interviews by Giulia Morucchio for Cactus Magazine, features artists based in Italy who work with heterogeneous media and practices. In the fourth episode, we went back to Venice. We had a chat with Arseny Zhilyaev, a conceptual artist based between Moscow and Venice who works at the edge of fiction and non-fiction creating imaginary museums and exhibitions.
by Riccardo Banfi and Giulia Morucchio

Sam Rolfes. Interaction in the Metaverse

New York-based artist Sam Rolfes is one of those personalities who best represent the concepts of worlding, combining a personal database of influences with an incredible application of new technologies and aesthetics. Moving from graphic design, experimental music, and 3D animation, he merges everything into his experimental VR performances, where spatial choreography plays a fundamental role. Alongside his team, Team Rolfes ⎯ founded with his brother Andy ⎯ he realized projects and collaborations with Danny L Harle, the collective House of Kenzo, Lady Gaga and A.G. Cook, often portrayed in festivals, galleries and experimental events all over the world.
by Nicola Zolin

Francesco Vezzoli. Infinite Palimpsests

After visiting the Archaeological Park and Museum of Santa Giulia in Brescia – where Francesco Vezzoli’s works are currently on display until January 16, 2022 – I had the occasion of exchange thoughts with the artist that brought to the surface central themes of the exhibition and of his practice. We discussed the relationship between the archaeological context and his art, the exhibition design, the protagonists such as the Winged Victory, the characters of pop culture and the iconic tear on portraits, without neglecting a reflection on the art of restoration and the role of cinema in his research.
by Martina Alemani

Dominique White. Reifying Abysses

White’s work is profoundly linked to certain themes, such as Black Subjectivity, nautical myths of Black Diaspora, Detroit techno and Afro-futurism/pessimism which, continuously intertwined with each other, are knotted together creating ever new plots. The text aims to trace the forms and survivals of these elements in Hydra Decapita, outlining in broad strokes the conceptual horizon that moves White’s practice and the marine context in which it takes place.
by Simone Rossi

Nicolas Party. Before and After That Time

On a pleasant summer morning, I set down with Nicolas Party for a conversation on the occasion of his solo show Rovine [Ruins] at MASI in Lugano on view through January 9 2022, unveiling the behind the scenes of the exhibition, his practice and success, thoughts on nature in contemporary times, and a glimpse into his personal life.
by Martina Alemani

Annamaria Ajmone. Infra—Nights

We will start a new journey through insights on dance and performativity enabled by friendship and situated occasions. On December 4 2021, Annamaria Ajmone, a brilliant Italian dancer, artist and dear friend, was invited to cross the space of the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi in Venice, during the second act of the site-specific exhibition titled Gestus and curated by Video Sound Art. Ajmone investigated the space through three encounters with the public spread throughout Saturday starting at noon.
by Laura Pante

Valentino. Endless Recoding

On the occasion of the second experience of the re-signification project of the Maison Valentino in a museum context in Asia, we had the opportunity to interview Jacopo Bedussi who, together with Mariuccia Casadio, curated the show designed by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli.
by Simone Rossi

Treti Galaxie. Perturbative Space

The memories surrounding my first meeting with Matteo Mottin and Ramona Ponzini – Treti Galaxie – go back to a spring morning in Tuscany, on the terrace of a small house perched in the hills. We discussed art, projects and dreams. From that lively exchange I still have a strong feeling that has pushed me, over the years, to follow with growing interest the research of the curatorial duo. Treti Galaxie turns five years old this year. This seems the right time and place to deepen our encounter and celebrate their journey. We did it through a mixed montage of texts, capable of stimulating new reflections and questions useful, we hope, also for the future.
by Francesca Filisetti

Exercises of Seeing II | The Lonely Man

This focus is dedicated to the screenings that premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival and aims, through a montage exercise, to reveal a leitmotiv that links many of the narratives presented. Indeed, a common theme, sometimes more hidden, sometimes more explicit, seems to characterize the contemporary vision: the crisis of masculinity; or rather: the lonely man and his detachment from relationships.
by Simone Rossi

Hands on Time | The Illusion of the End

The Illusion of the End, Mudam’s two-week performance exhibition program curated by Joel Valabrega, successfully reveals and questions the unstable agency of the spectatorship, emphasizing its relationship to space, the gaze of others, and, most importantly, the notion of time. Gathering some of the most compelling artists of the contemporary European performative scene, the program unfolds through hyperboles of action and moments of void, where performance becomes a weapon to negotiate new forms of perception of time in space.
by Simone Rossi

This the new me, get used to me. Donda

Kanye West’s tenth album Donda marks a milestone in his career, bringing him back in the spotlight and giving the perfect representation of where he is right now artistically, mentally, and spiritually. Started as an album and turned into a pop culture phenomenon through monumental stadium-hosted listening parties, it portrays a newly inspired Kanye, committed to his art in a way that we haven’t seen him in a while. No more loafing around wasting his focus with drama and unnecessary side-projects, through this album he now re-establishes his relevancy in today’s musical and cultural landscape.
by Giovanni Cagni

Exercises of Seeing | Hudinilson Jr.

This focus will be the first of a series of investigations around the theme of montage in contemporary culture. The series is conceived as an “exercise of seeing,” echoing a definition that Brazilian artist Hudinilson Jr. (1957-2013) used for his scrapbooks named Cadernos de refêrencias. To these, and the tactics adopted to move within Hudinilson Jr.’s montages, this opening excursion will be dedicated.
by Simone Rossi

Caroline Achaintre. Uncanny Eroticism

Much like anthropological fetishes, Caroline’s creations have a strong cohesive power, balancing between often conflicting entities. The oscillation between past and present in Achaintre’s art is eternal, endowing her works with a fleeting impression: although her roots lie in German Expressionism and renewed Primitivism, her art seduces us with its unconventional and multifaceted character.
by Beatrice Benella

Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation. A Passionate Minimalist Affair

When I was invited to the opening of Michael Krebber’s exhibition at the Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation in Bolzano, I also had the opportunity to visit Robert Breer’s exhibition and the Antonio Dalle Nogare collection on display at the Foundation. In a state of ecstasy after the view of the vineyards − which form the backdrop to the outdoor space, where the permanent installations of Dan Graham and Robert Barry are located − I met Antonio Dalle Nogare.
by Martina Alemani

Hannah Diamond. Imagining Perfection

My research has always been focused on the convergences between different worlds, in particular, conceptually revolving around sounds and visuals. This led me to deepen the concept of world-building, or on how different elements converge together to create a set of liquid narrations. Here comes Hannah Diamond and her ability to melt together different media to create her environment both visual and sonic.
by Nicola Zolin

Disclosure #03 | Elisa Giardina Papa

Disclosure is a focus on the artist’s studio, considered both as a place of physical and intellectual production and as an archive of languages and experimentations. The project features Italian-based artists who work with heterogeneous media and practices. In the third episode we met Elisa Giardina Papa. 
by Riccardo Banfi and Giulia Morucchio

Enrico Malatesta. Pyrotechnics

Two years ago I started writing a column called HABITAT. Each time the web surface hosts the lecture of a new-material artists’ conformation. On this occasion I will remediate Enrico Malatesta’s artistic operations and research procedures by choosing two forms of dialogue with his emblematic compositions: a vibrant mixture of sounds, experimental music, performances and pedagogical projects.
by Laura Pante

Bruce Nauman | Contrapposto Studies

A talk with the curators of Bruce Nauman’s Contrapposto Studies exhibition at Punta della Dogana ⎯ Carlos Basualdo and Caroline Bourgeois ⎯ on what constitutes artistic practice and an artist’s work, how to still have some sort of mental freedom during pandemic, and much more.
by Martina Alemani

The Pole Gallery. Moments of Being

Virginia Woolf described a “moment of being” as a moment in which an individual experiences a sense of reality in contrast to the “non-being” states that dominate most of an individual’s conscious life. I’ve been thinking about Woolf’s words over the past few months, and one project that has recently impressed me is The Pole Gallery, first launched in London just over a year ago by Anglo-American artist Orfeo Tagiuri. In Paris, it opened in November 2020 after curator Francesca Sabatini thought the ville lumière deserved a Pole Gallery, too.
by Daniele Bellonio

Disclosure #02 | Diego Marcon

Disclosure is a focus on the artist’s studio, considered both as a place of physical and intellectual production and as an archive of languages and experimentations. The project features Italian-based artists who work with heterogeneous media and practices. Diego Marcon is the guest of the second episode. 
by Riccardo Banfi and Giulia Morucchio

Lisetta Carmi. Documenting Sardinia

Standing in front of the laptops, still in our confinements, It was a relief the announcement of Lisetta Carmi’s major anthological exhibition Merry voices in the dark. Photographs in Sardinia 1962-76 at MAN, Nuoro. It is a chance to travel, also back in time, at least in our heads.
by Martina Alemani

Design Narratives. On Sonic Arts and the Creations of Worlds

One of the core elements in contemporary visual and audio culture is, without a doubt, the creation of narratives: everything needs to merge together in different shapes to give life to a sequence of events, materials, designs, memories, and objects. The creation of an art product requires the creation of a narration, that it has been affected and shaped by other narrations − and that could affect in turn.
by Nicola Zolin

Disclosure #01 | Alessandro Di Pietro

Disclosure is a focus on the artist’s studio, considered both as a place of physical and intellectual production and as an archive of languages and experimentations. The project features Italian-based artists who work with heterogeneous media and practices. The first episode is dedicated to Milan-based visual artist Alessandro Di Pietro. 
by Riccardo Banfi and Giulia Morucchio

Melting Environments. On Sonic Arts and the Creation of Worlds

In late 2019, the renowned and discussed website Pitchfork published an article by the critic Simon Reynolds that unexpectedly gave life to an online shambles in the electronic music community.
The article concerned was a synthetic exploration of a new tendency in the world of experimental electronic music: since the end of the ‘00s, artists started to create works not only relegated to the musical medium but spread also into the most disparate territories, like visual art, fashion design, and publishing. Simon Reynolds brings together these artists under the same conceptual umbrella, calling it Conceptronica.
by Nicola Zolin

Clarice Pecori Giraldi. The Collezione Fondazione San Patrignano at PART

On a warm early autumn morning, PART (Palazzi dell’Arte Rimini) previewed with a meaningful conference between its main protagonists: Stefano Bonaccini, President of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Andrea Gnassi, Mayor of Rimini, Letizia Moratti, Co-Founder of the Fondazione San Patrignano, Clarice Pecori Giraldi, Curatorial Coordinator of the Collezione Fondazione San Patrignano and Luca Cipelletti, author of the architectural and display project – in the context of the magnificent Teatro Galli, renovated after 75 years since its closing. 
by Martina Alemani

Alexandra Bachzetsis | Broad Casting Studies

In her latest choreographic work Chasing a Ghost Alexandra Bachzetsis creates an erratic way to share a dimly lit stage with four dancers, two musicians and a series of sculptural props: two grand pianos, two stationary cameras with LED panels, a television on wheels and a discarded faux fur coat. For one hour they role play.
by Vincent Crapon

Push The Limits

On the first Monday of September 2020, Fondazione Merz was ready for a post-lockdown restart with a preview of the group exhibition PUSH THE LIMITS in the presence of its curators Claudia Gioia and Beatrice Merz. Celebrating also the first 15 years of the foundation activity, the show was conceived in a constant dialogue between the artists and the curators and surprisingly it turned out being still extremely actual even after the pandemic – but also the new struggles of the Black Lives Matter movement – that the world experienced this year. 
by Martina Alemani

Venice 76. A Daydreaming Session

The Venice Film Festival’s ecosystem is endowed with something peerless. That context is able to produce a specific inner transference, even after several years of direct experience. Everything there constantly disperses: meanings, voices, movies. The apparent isolation of that thin line of land separating the sea and the lagoon turns into a threshold for encounters, a point of collision, peripheral epicentre where thoughts are revealed in their rawest form. That place expresses the power of difference.
by Simone Rossi

Sinead O’Dwyer. Manipulating Fashion Design

Sinéad O’Dwyer has been under the radar and keeps on surprising for her avant-garde approach to fashion design. Her work investigates the relationship existing between the body and the garment from a sociological and philosophical point of view. She examines the dichotomy of perception versus reality, calling out fashion and society as the propagators of such fracture. Oscillating between art and fashion design, O’Dwyer uses sculpture and silicon as media to question the misconception we have of the garment itself and its relation to the body.
by Valeria Della Valle

Untitled 2020. A Way to Recover One’s Own Journey and History

This exhibition (Punta della Dogana, Venice, through December 13th, 2020) comes at the right time bringing some thoughts: from space appropriation in a museum, to the idea that we can live in beauty and integrity. There are artists who have an interesting proposal and who have been able to create their own world, and artworks that remind us to think about our body and our role in the world – without overlooking the universal experience of death, as well as sex.
by Martina Alemani

Of Certain Places, At Certain Times

Now, instead of starting to write again re-proposing myself uncritically in the media flow (as if nothing happened), I feel the need to give voice to the time I have lived, sharing it, or rather introducing the transversal images that have stimulated my phantasia. Petros Márkaris has embarked me to the anachronic journey through images. A journey that exploits all those minutiae, those unusual details of past experiences that reappear as traces of meaning. Márkaris brings me back to Morocco, who knows why, to the Menara gardens of Marrakesh, maybe for the warm air of the heatwave and the colors melted under the weight of an atmosphere too thick not to be perceived.
by Simone Rossi

The Revolution Will Be Mainstreamed. On Pop Culture Absorbing Black Music

The world outside is constantly changing day-by-day and – even if 2020 got us used to it – it’s almost hard to keep up. As we write this, we are witnessing history being made. Besides the political and social aspects of the circumstance, there’s an interesting take about the role of music in this “American Spring”.
by Giovanni Cagni

Damon Zucconi | Clouds in Beholders’ Eyes

We don’t specifically know if we are experiencing a metaphor for our capitalistic culture – stressed between frustrated desires and illusionary goals – or if we are placed in front of our most secret and private feelings, but the general impression is a fluidity that brings a single need into a collective attitude, or vice versa.
by Stefano Mudu

Pakui Hardware. Bodies in Hybridization

MdbK, Leipzig’s Museum der bildenden Künste, recently hosted Underbelly, an immersive installation by Lithuanian art-duo Pakui Hardware – composed of Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda – operating on the art scene since 2014. We took this chance to expand an unusual and crosscutting collaboration. We engaged in a fashion narrative within the museum, and went through an open conversation regarding the body and the transformations it is facing in the hyper-technological scenario that hosts and alters it with increasing violence.
by Simone Rossi

Vasya Run | A Journey in Youth’s Culture

Vasya Run is a complex project that works as a junction between music, theater, performance and contemporary art. Delineated through anonymity, Vasya wants to be a platform for experimentation enabling interaction and collaboration. It is an intensely powerful work which stands out because of its theoretical framework and thanks to the alternative practices that have been used during the working sessions within the group. The formation is composed by young men aged between 18 and 28 which have no experience whatsoever in performing arts. Vasya Run analyses forms of otherness which emerge from the differences in subjectivity of the performers that create a dense representation of youth’s sub-culture.
by Joel Valabrega

AV Vattev. Beyond Gender Expectations

I meet Antonio Vattev right after his return from Paris Fashion Week, where he presented his AW20 collection. The garments are a masculine take on women’s tailoring, and purposefully play with your expectations of gender: there’s a tailored coat in glassy yellow satin coat with amorphously – shaped panels – a technique that can be seen echoed in brightly patterned sweaters, corseted leather jackets, and organza shirts.
by Gunseli Yalcinkaya

form is void – void is color

Our visual evolution begins in our childhood. We cannot say exactly when it starts – could it be our first travel? – but we do know it is developed throughout our constant discovery of the world and of our place in it. Joel Valabrega & Gayarama’s form is void void is color aims at recapturing this inner visual-narrative activity: dealing with transformation, form and landscape, this labyrinthic book – defined by elaborate paper engineering – reflects the imaginary content where the observer metaphysically follows a phantasmagorical children journey.
by Daniele Bellonio

Texture with Humans’ Features

Anna Franceschini’s attitude is a touch that dwells on the veil of things and bodies, like a dress whose threads have the ability to weave its phenomenological appearances with their formal structures. Looking at the trajectory of her productions over the last five years, I will focus on her particular way of dressing the image of the moving body, during her performance interventions.
by Laura Pante

serpentwithfeet | will my ink betray me?

Josiah Wise, known to the public as serpentwithfeet, is one of today’s most interesting experimental R&B new sensations. His 2018 album ‘soil’ was highly praised by both the critic and the public, amplifying the attention he catalyzed with his debut EP – the critically acclaimed ‘blisters’ – in 2016. We had the chance to talk with him about different topics, including his music and background, as well as his influences and references.
by Giovanni Cagni

Études Studio. The Smashing Trio for Visual Culture

Just under two years ago When Études Become Form was released, the first anthology gathering the collaborations, influences and collections that have contributed to shaping the brand as we know it today. Elegantly quoting the title of the paradigmatic exhibition curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969, Études symbolically opts to depart from that moment to reveal a key to understanding the approach that distinguishes the studio, its philosophy and its transversal language towards visual culture. We started from there to conduct this series of questions aimed at revealing the many aspects that, so skillfully combined, give shape to one of the most fascinating cultural phenomena of our time.
by Simone Rossi

Art Market – Entering The New Decade

The art market of contemporary artists is defined particularly by art fairs, so by entering the new decade we can refer to the last main art fair – in December 2019 – of Art Basel Miami Beach to make a list of the names who sold for best there.
by Martina Alemani

2010s: The Hip Hop Takeover

The past decade saw Hip Hop imposing its influence like never before. In the 2010s Hip Hop attained his dominance on Pop Culture, setting what is cool and what is not, and having everyone following its last trends. Rap music is constantly selling more than any other genre and headlining the most important music festivals of the planet. Hip Hop transcends nations and races, having Asian kids dancing to rap songs on TikTok and white girls twerking on Instagram. These same white girls, whose sisters wanted to be Britney Spears, now want to be Cardi B.
by Giovanni Cagni

Tarek Atoui: Sessions

I met Tarek Atoui immediately after the performance by Uriel Barthélémi staged at Palazzo Grassi in November, over the wonderful Luc Tuymans mosaic prematurely removed after that day because of the high water of the previous week. The scenery was intense, the lights were dimmed and people moved quickly following the perfomer between the two stations. There were those who paused to observe and discern the different instruments that made up the session, those who closed their eyes and let the sound pervade their space of thought, and those who watched both the firsts and the seconds, enjoying the sound and the surrounding scene. We started from there to make a wider speech including his presence at the last Venice Biennale and his on-going projects.
by Simone Rossi

a ppr oc he – a new (fashion) narrative

Few new photography projects have attracted such interest quite as quickly as a ppr oc he, a salon devoted to the experimentation of the photographic medium, whose Third Edition was held in Paris, November 8-10, 2019. The heading serves as both a taste and a warning: if you can take part in a photo exhibition without scrolling through Instagram, then it must be worth it, particularly in terms of emotional depth.
by Daniele Bellonio

Sunday at the Church. Other Spirituality, Other Community

On the occasion of the last appointment of ‘Time, forward!’ – VAC Foundation’s Public Program curated by Giulia Morucchio and Joel Valabrega at the Venetian ‘Chiesetta della Misericordia’ – Amsterdam-based, Italian choreographer and artist Michele Rizzo presented an adaptation of Higher xtn, a performance he has been performing since 2015.
by Stefano Mudu

Huma Bhabha

Having spent periods between Pakistan, New York City and now Poughkeepsie, New York, Huma Bhabha’s work is all about visual things, settings and landscapes from these different places. Her artworks are a response to the world we live in today, when the global is local and globalization is the new colonialism, eternal themes because as human beings we haven’t been able to get farther them. There is nothing ironic or cynical in her choices; all the references – whether to Alberto Giacometti, pop culture, Cambodian statuary or Westermann, Philip Guston, tribal cultures and alien life forms – are sincerely made, with the goal to create pieces that look intense in their presence and aggressively make the viewer attracted by a beauty coming from the unexpected.
by Martina Alemani

Abstract Sex. We Don’t Have Any Clothes, Only Equipment

During Artissima 2019, the collateral project ‘Abstract Sex. We don’t have any clothes, only equipment’ was unveiled. Conceived by Artissima director Ilaria Bonacossa, and curated by independent curator and writer Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti and gallery owner and critic Guido Costa, the project took place in a cult space in town, Jana – fashion boutique and historical landmark for artists, writers and intellectuals. To introduce this fascinating project supported by Kristina Ti, Simone Rossi engaged in a dialogue with Ilaria Bonacossa, creating a roundtable for a horizontal conversation between curators. The result is a lively debate where Calabrò Visconti and Costa provide answers in unison, reflecting a significant unity of purpose.
by Simone Rossi

Elmgreen & Dragset – It’s Not What You Think

Based in Berlin, Michael Elmgreen (Danish, b. 1961) and Ingar Dragset (Norwegian, b. 1969) have been working together since 1995, redefining the format in which contemporary art is normally presented. Their installations, from sculptures to total environments, have included illusionistic experiments that change the perception of space, structures and architecture: galleries suspended by balloons, trampolines that jump into the imagination, unstable floors and upside-down rooms. In this interview we will deal with the exhibition ‘It’s Not What You Think’ – on view at Blueproject Foundation in Barcelona, through October 27 – in relation to their artistic practice.
by Francesca Filisetti

Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis (1936-2017) is a key figure of the Arte Povera movement. The major retrospective of his work is on view now, through November 24, at Fondazione Prada, Venice, in a show curated by historian, curator and director of the above-mentioned Foundation Germano Celant.
by Martina Alemani

Keep Pushing a Little Harder. The Crosscutting Blues of Fantastic Negrito

Fantastic Negrito’s life is a tale of failure and success. A story of struggle and hustle. A narrative of ascent, fall and rebirth. A case of artistic freedom. A plot that everyone must know, at some point in their life.
by Giovanni Cagni

Ghost in Real Time(s)

The research undertaken through this HABITAT series continues here with an exploration around the event format that I would like to examine through this new compound of words. From 4 to 13 April 2019, XING presented the 8th edition of LIVE ARTS WEEK  in very specific venues – known and unknown, public and private – through the city of Bologna.
by Laura Pante

Porno-graphing. Where Pornography Meets Art

At the end of last autumn, while I was under a downpour on a grey day of a cold and windy Athens, I found shelter in the Telecommunications, Telegrams and Post building in the city centre: it was time to start my first Athens Biennale.
by Simone Rossi

Kenneth Ize. Beneath the Texture of a Contemporary Fashion Geek

Being a fashion geek is a contemporary privilege for those who follow contemporary fashion culture beneath trends but at the same time – I must confess – I’m not necessarily a big fan of young designers awards. I’ve always found them too detached from the reality of fashion or too focused on their sponsorship. But the LVMH Award, curated by Delphine Arnault, is something very different, I have to admit.
by Daniele Bellonio

Gentle Monster | Future Now

Since its foundation, Seoul-based eyewear brand Gentle – founded by Hankook Kim in 2011 – has worked in collaboration with several artists, brands and celebrities such as Tilda Swinton, Hood by Air, Moooi, Henrik Vibskov, Alexander Wang and Fendi, among others, defining a avant-garde approach. We had the chance to meet Gary Bott, Managing Director and Head of Gentle Monster UK, to talk about the brand’s philosophy, its first European store and future projects.
by Simone Rossi

Finding Redemption Through Spirituality: Kanye West’s Sunday Service

Lately it’s been hard out here for a Kanye fan. Precisely, it’s been hard at least in the last three years. Take a walk in your neighborhood and look at the people around you, look for the most stressed and disappointed ones: they’re either liberals or Kanye West fans. Or maybe both.
by Giovanni Cagni

Venice Biennale, The Malaysian Debut

Malaysia presents itself for the first time on the international art scene of the Venice Biennale with a plural and significant participation that activates numerous central themes in the dynamic multicultural landscape that makes today a place that we could define as interesting, as Ralph Rugoff reminds us.
by Simone Rossi

Paul Mpagi Sepuya

For ‘The Conditions,’ Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s first solo exhibition with Team Gallery in New York, we got the chance to talk to the Los Angeles-based artist about his performative practice, the role of the observer and the dispositif of mirror.
by Simone Rossi

Milovan Farronato

From following his projects and career, feeling his charming presence at some familiar exhibition’s openings, I had the great chance to interview Milovan Farronato – curator of the Italian Pavilion at the upcoming 58th Venice Biennale – ending in a conversation while helping him getting dressed during the portrait series we shot with Tassili Calatroni.
by Martina Alemani

Oliver Osborne

A young GDR era Merkel – as stated in the exhibition’s text by Eoin Donnelly – is depicted in and provides the title for the latest show ‘Birth, Education, Leisure, Death’ by Oliver Osborne at Gió Marconi in Milan.
by Martina Alemani

Cristina Kristal Rizzo

It is a system that organizes time more than space, it is a rhythm that organizes vision, the scanning of transforming body states. I do not consider my work as a ‘choreographic’, I do not organize time and space to produce an image that belongs to me and defines me as an artist, I am interested in alterations…
by Laura Pante

Desiring Desire

Why not about Brandon, Esther or Dick? Why not writing on what keeps our lives moving? On that primitive desire that animated matters, driving force of life, power of attraction denoting lack?
by Simone Rossi

Albert Oehlen

“The right to contradict oneself and the right to go away” are among the unjustly forgotten human rights, distinguished by Charles Baudelaire. For the first, without it one would never be able to start thinking – in painting or in anything else. And common sense now encourages to use the second without delay.
by Martina Alemani

Casting Of Your Own

Recently, for personal and professional reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of casting: a pre-production process for selecting a certain type of person.
by Daniele Bellonio

Aviva Silverman

The first time I met Aviva was in Florence, on her first solo show in Europe, at Spazio Veda. It was at the end of September and she told me that she would shortly leave for the island of Elba, out of season, in October.
by Simone Rossi

Luís Lázaro Matos

In anticipation of his upcoming solo show at Madragoa, Lisbon, in May, I sat down with Luís Lázaro to discuss his next project, find out more about his artistic practice and his intimate alogical relation with the place he lives in.
by Simone Rossi

Tomorrow Will Become Female

Les Particules élémentaires, a harsh novel released in 1998 by Michel Houellebecq, is a strategic starting point that reflects on how the Western world is facing and foreshadowing its future and that of the bodies that inhabit it.
by Simone Rossi

Evgeny Antufiev

In the wake of the general collapse of the space of the myth, the knowledge of myth becomes the basis for creativity and the perception of reality.
by Martina Alemani