“Piazzetta Rizzoli 1” at Museo Arte Contemporanea Cavalese

The exhibition proposes a reflection on the phenomenon of living understood as an existential and relational experience, focusing on the idea of place as a space inhabited by bodies and people, and contextually investigating the interaction between individual and community.

A group exhibition that offers the public works by Robert Bosisio, Lorenzo Gnata, Edson Luli, Martina Melilli, Fulvio Morella, Gabriele Napoli, Daniel Spoerri, John Torreano and Joe Zucker. The exhibition, curated by Elsa Barbieri, activates a reflection on the phenomenon of living understood as an existential and relational experience, focusing on the idea of place as a space inhabited by bodies and people, and contextually investigating the interaction between individual and community.

The title of the exhibition refers to the physical location of the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Cavalese. “It is a curious title that responds to my desire to share this place with the community,
where I would like as many people as possible to recognize themselves as inhabitants, by instinct
or by design, by feeling or by objectivity, by dream or by concreteness. Dwelling is a phenomenon that belongs to us so much and so intimately that it is not possible to enclose it in a definition, but we can try to make a phenomenal description of it that highlights the many faces of this human praxis,” explains Elsa Barbieri, director of the Museum.

To inhabit is to come into the world, and to come into the world is already to inhabit: this is the very essence of “Piazzetta Rizzoli 1”. The works on display in the exhibition live in space and interpersonal relationships—the result of natural impulses and also of a precise design intention—that stretch along diversified historical itineraries. The exhibition route winds its way through the museum spaces creating interconnected environments and innovative reflections. Thus, unknown surprising landscapes—external and internal—open up to the eyes of the visitor, and faces, bodies and voices are presented, unseen and archetypal, familiar, perturbing, smiling, profound, mystical, confirming that living is a sensation, a feeling.

Crossing the threshold of the museum, the public enters into a choral dialogue made up of different artistic languages and peculiar references from the experience and history of each artist. One example is Fulvio Morella’s works with the ‘starry braille’ alphabet, the result of the artist’s poetic reinterpretation of the braille language by replacing traditional dots with stars. In this sense, Morella invites the public to touch the sky and the stars with their fingers, reminding us that limits do not exist and that it is we who draw our own poetry, living each day with intensity.

The exhibition is articulated in a narrative that develops through the analysis of seemingly opposing concepts that nevertheless find an innovative fusion, such as nature and technology—central aspects of Lorenzo Gnata’s artistic practice, the real and the magical—foundations for Robert Bosisio’s research.

On the three exhibition floors of the museum, there are also works and installations that analyze the ambiguity and bewilderment that can be created when interior and exterior are not clearly separated and divisible. Joe Zucker creates windows into situations of everyday conviviality by analyzing the action of harvesting and processing olives in various regions of Italy, while John Torreano projects painting into the realm of sculpture, giving his works the metaphorical meaning of stars in deep space. Their facets change and shift as the inhabitant’s body moves around them.

The human figure is also extensively analyzed by the artists Gabriele Napoli, with a multiplication of alter egos exploring the self in search of identity in environments somewhere between the real and the dream, and by Daniel Spoerri, who through his mannequins reveals how each object has its own soul and poetics.

Edson Luli amply inhabits the exhibition rooms of the Museum with a series of clocks specially created for the exhibition, which have been deprived of their original function to make way for reflections on a time that is always current and present. After all, every inhabited space, from homes to offices, is equipped with wall clocks; Luli in this case leaves only the second hands installed, which move continuously in an abstract dimension devoid of reference points.

Finally, there is the involvement and active participation of local citizens in the artistic process, which opens up new possibilities for exchange and interaction.

This is the case with the site-specific work Fiammazze, created by artist Martina Melilli and sound artist Mauro Diciocia with the collaboration of the ION Association. Melilli and Diciocia worked with a group of women from Cavalese—Donatella Antoniazzi, Alice Bertoluzza, Loretta Corradini, Patrizia Dauru, Sara Defrancesco, Luisa Degiampietro, Barbara Molina, Christine Nones, Anna Maria Piazzi, Veronica Pinter, Patrizia Rossi, Fitime Sulejmani, Annamaria Vanzo, Elena Vinante—collecting from them a series of women’s stories linked to the territory – autobiographical or not, from the present and the past, true, or invented—and then associating with them, with each one, a specific sound object.

With the exhibition “Piazzetta Rizzoli 1”, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cavalese, under the direction of Elsa Barbieri, once again confirms itself as a place of encounter and experimentation “for artists of different generations, both national and international, who through their artistic work seek an unprecedented dialogue and participation with the local community.

Curated by
Elsa Barbieri

Participating artists
Robert Bosisio, Lorenzo Gnata, Edson Luli, Martina Melilli, Fulvio Morella, Gabriele Napoli, Daniel Spoerri, John Torreano and Joe Zucker