picks April 24, 2019

Thomaz Rosa

The nine paintings by Brazilian artist Thomaz Rosa on view in this Milan loft space are so varied in size and workmanship that they don’t look like they were all created by the same hand. Rosa references his seemingly haphazard research process in the show’s title, “Intorno Alla Mia Cattiva Educazione” (About My Bad Education), which he borrowed from a 1974 song by an Italian progressive rock band, Alusa Fallax, that he discovered on YouTube. Instead of developing an easily identifiable, personal stylistic cipher, Rosa annotates art-historical homages with the imponderability of chance and

picks January 22, 2019

Eva Marisaldi

After being closed around three months for renovations, the PAC in Milan has reopened with “Trasporto eccezionale” (Oversize Load), an Eva Marisaldi survey curated by Diego Sileo: a complex journey into this Bolognese artist’s world recounted through thirty-six works dating back to 1993. The “cargo” proceeds, room after room, through memories of trips—both actual and internal, from Africa to Europe to Japan—and references ranging from Emily Dickinson to Truman Capote. Most beguiling are soundscapes composed by the artist’s partner and collaborator, Enrico Serotti. These include Nastronave (

picks November 30, 2018

Jorge Macchi

The Argentine artist Jorge Macchi’s sixth exhibition here, “Suspension Points,” presents nearly thirty installations, paintings, and sound pieces. Most are shown for the first time, and all are harmonizers of addition and subtraction, presence and void. As the show’s title hints, the works evoke the paradox of an ellipsis inserted between words (silence, omission), delighting in a perceptual buffering powered by playful, rigorous tensions that belie simple forms.

The diptych Suspension points 03, 2018, an acrylic on paper, depicts, on one panel, the image of an Italian building defined by the

picks August 11, 2018

Diego Marcon

Resembling a page from a twisted children’s coloring book, the site-specific work that comprises Diego Marcon’s debut institutional solo exhibition begins at the bedside of a sick little girl. The wall composition, curated by Edoardo Bonaspetti and titled La Miserabile (Wretchedness), 2018, unfolds into a highly involved vigil starring sixteen enigmatic figures—other adolescents who try to brush up against the afflicted girl, scrutinize her, or distract themselves with meaningless actions such as looking under the bed or playing with a doll. The room delineates an ambiguous space between sanctity

picks May 23, 2018

Roman Signer

This survey of Swiss artist Roman Signer comprises thirty-four works that highlight the artist’s concept of “action sculpture,” a mode that combines empirical creation with the intrinsic potential of the object’s nature. The show begins on the villa’s exterior porch. Planschbecken mit Schwimmflügeln (Wading Pool with Water Wings), 2018, an inflatable pool full of water and floating plastic water wings—starkly superimposed against the circular geometry of the mosaic floor paving—establishes an immediate relationship with the architecture of the site. This piece opens up a central sequence that

picks March 26, 2018

“In the Reading Room of Hell”

“In the Reading Room of Hell,” an exhibition curated by publishing platform NOVEL and loosely inspired by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s 2004 dystopian novel 2666, takes language beyond a mere communicative function to construct a surreal and beautifully confused plot. The project orchestrates twelve different artistic processes, to form a narrative short-circuit that ultimately exceeds the gallery’s two floors, with three large posters installed throughout the lagoon city.

The show opens with Elaine Cameron-Weir’s aerial work wave form walks the earth, 2017, framed by the large, windowed

picks March 05, 2018

Katharina Grosse and Tatiana Trouvé

For the fourth and final event in “UNE,” a series of intergenerational exhibitions promoted by the French Academy, curator Chiara Parisi has constructed a dialogue between the massively scaled pictorial work of Katharina Grosse and the symbolic, graphic production of Tatiana Trouvé. Selected for their generational proximity and a shared approach based on the alteration of material and context, the artists interweave works from the past with new interventions, all installed in four contiguous areas of the Mannerist villa Medici.

The show opens with Trouvé’s sculptures Somewhere in the Solar System

picks February 22, 2018

Erin Shirreff and Elia Cantori

The works of Erin Shirreff and Elia Cantori, shown at separate Banca di Bologna locations for two exhibitions curated by Simone Menegoi, have something in common: an investigation of the cosmos and the darkroom. Two new works by Shirreff are installed at the Palazzo De’ Toschi, where an underlit, sacred atmosphere welcomes viewers and draws their attention to a video projected on a large, double-sided screen, Son, 2018, which reveals a view of nature determined by perceptual disorientation, beginning with the title, a homophone of the word sun. The artist, fascinated by the total solar eclipse

picks December 11, 2017

Vlatka Horvat

For her first exhibition in Italy, Croatian artist Vlatka Horvat has installed eleven works across the gallery’s two floors. “Surroundings” pays homage to the horizon, as both a spatial boundary and a goal to which one can aspire, ideologically and physically. The show’s natural path opens with two wooden tables created in 2016, titled Set Right (Table Leg) and Set Right (Tabletop). Reduced to structural skeletons, they boast delicate additions of ribbonlike cardboard, attached with white adhesive tape, as if to conjure missing parts. At Some Length, 2017, is a straight line at eye level, more

picks November 16, 2017

Nick Mauss

Nick Mauss’s third exhibition with this gallery, arranged throughout both of its Rue de Braque locations, features works that deal with reflection, both literally and metaphorically. In the shadowy arena of Campoli Presti’s ground-floor space is the video installation The Moment (all works 2017). From a projector hung close to the ceiling, an image of a hand drawing an enigmatic sign is cast onto a mirror hanging from a wall. From there, the image is reflected onto the wooden floor, creating a subtle holographic effect while transforming the symbol into a viaticum for artistic creation. We also

picks August 29, 2017

Hiroshi Sugimoto

In the deliberately dim light and cozy ambience of two large contiguous rooms at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto has installed twenty photographic prints from his “Theaters” series. The exhibition, curated by Filippo Maggia and Irene Calderoli, marks the debut of this new series, created over the past three years, which focuses on the interiors of large Italian theaters chosen for their distinctive architecture. The characteristically black-and-white images are the result of advanced photographic techniques and extended exposure times, which captured

picks August 21, 2017

Karl Holmqvist and Klara Liden

In a large Roman apartment on Via dei Mille, the Indipendenza gallery hosts “Lavoro” (Work), a collaboration between Karl Holmqvist and Klara Liden. This project, originally exhibited in 2016 at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, now includes a new combination of works, some on view for the first time, as well as older installations and videos, such as Nhite Woice, 2015, in which Holmqvist and Liden improvise a synchronized dance. The dialogue underlying the exhibition, activated by twenty-nine works overall, opens with the interaction between Linden’s emblematic Poster Painting, 2012—layered, painted

picks August 17, 2017

Micol Assaël

Micol Assaël’s solo exhibition “Lettura Di Un’Onda” (Interpretation of a Wave), curated by Bruno Corà and Valentino Catricalà, presents new work across the entire top floor of the Palazzo Belmonte Riso. The Roman artist activates a discrete dialogue with a large permanent installation by Jannis Kounellis composed of old wardrobes suspended from the ceiling. In three adjacent rooms, Assaël has installed four works made from paper and magnets that hang on accordion folding supports which are mounted on horizontal planks built from old windows (typical of working class Sicilian architecture) and

picks June 13, 2017

Yoko Ono and Claire Tabouret

From the entrance of the Villa Medici, throughout its rooms, and even through its outdoor space, an extended juxtaposition of installation works by Yoko Ono and paintings by French artist Claire Tabouret leads viewers along a complex path. The show creates a dialogue between Tabouret’s new paintings of female figures—with watery backgrounds and energetic, gestural strokes—and Ono’s conceptual, participatory works. Ono’s video SKY TV, 1966–2017, consisting of thirty screens showing live transmissions of Rome’s skies—sets the stage for a counterpoint between her Painting to be Stepped On, 1960–2017,

picks February 07, 2017

Pieter Vermeersch

Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch’s second solo show at this gallery’s Paris location comprises seventeen abstract paintings, all Untitled, 2016, made on canvas and marble. They do not readily blend into the architecture of the space—a strategy the artist has employed before.

The show opens with a series of large chromatic fade-outs on canvas. Each painting has been defaced with scratches: meditative gestures that seem to function as indices of the body. In another room of the gallery, two paintings with more rigid monochromatic gradations, created to mirror each other, have been partially obscured

picks February 06, 2017

Peter Buggenhout

Amid the whiteness of a large room in the Palazzo De’ Toschi an installation by Peter Buggenhout takes on the significance of an imposing archaeological find—a mass of detritus, postatomic in feeling, that has touched down from the sky. For his debut solo show in Italy, curated by Simone Menegoi, the Belgian artist offers one of his largest works to date, The Blind Leading the Blind #65, 2014. The title, taken from a masterpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, is a metaphor for Buggenhout’s poetics, which aims to demonstrate the fragility of human knowledge

picks December 27, 2016

Patrick Tuttofuoco

Patrick Tuttofuoco’s first solo show at this gallery features five new works. The artist has long been interested in the impalpability of reality—the possibility that the past cannot be historicized and the future is the new present—and in this show, titled “Pretty Good Privacy,” he underscores a contemporary existence increasingly split between actual and virtual experience. As soon as visitors cross the gallery threshold, they catch sight of a work on the floor, A Better Place (all works 2016), a scrolling LED screen that both reproduces and parodies the extent to which cutting-edge technology

picks November 28, 2016

Marc Camille Chaimowicz

French artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz, one of the early proponents of a multidisciplinary approach to art that dovetailed performance and installation, now orchestrates a project devoted to the architecture of its venue, La Triennale di Milano. Chaimowicz compares the aesthetic affinities of this space to the oneiric aspects of metaphysics. “Maybe Metafisica,” curated by Eva Fabbris, follows a circular trajectory that—beginning with Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Figliol Prodigo (Prodigal Son), 1973—retraces in stages Chaimowicz’s expressive forms, seen in decorative panels, furniture, and highly

picks October 28, 2016

Betty Woodman and Kiki Smith

Exhibiting together for the first time, Betty Woodman and Kiki Smith initiate an intense dialogue through a selection of their large-scale paintings, tapestries, sculptures, and graphics. Along the long walls of the main gallery, Smith’s atonal and transcendent works interface with Woodman’s colorful and flamboyant vision of domestic interiors, creating a complete visual imbalance that dwells, respectively, on natural landscapes and private imaginative spaces.

Four large canvases by Woodman (Summer Tea Party, 2015; Reversal, 2016; Betty’s Room, 2011; Table and Rug, 2016) are characterized by the

picks October 07, 2016

Giovanni Kronenberg

Giovanni Kronenberg’s debut exhibition at this gallery opens with a large rock crystal in which a black baroque pearl is embedded. With a selection of new works, the artist delinates a path, lit by theatrical spotlights, through the gallery’s three rooms. The pieces are made with objects Kronenberg has collected over time, curios from his personal archive. Recognizing their polysemous qualities, he brings them into the present tense, prudently enriching or in some cases detaching them from their meanings.

In the second gallery, an untitled graphite drawing takes on a sculptural look. Created

Maria Chiara Valacchi