“Every work of art, from cave paintings to The Betrothed, It presents itself as an object open to an infinite number of tastings. Benedetto Croce reminded us. The work of art presents itself as an inexhaustible source of experiences that, by focusing on it, always bring out new aspects. By selecting the artists of this new edition that we have called "In the shadow” and which will open in Piacenza on Saturday, September 19th at 5:00 PM, again inside that fascinating archaeological site at the entrance to the city: the Magazzino dei Formaggi of the former Agricultural Consortium (on Via Pennazzi), abandoned for over 10 years. We asked ourselves whether contemporary art, by educating people to continually break away from models and patterns, might not be a liberating pedagogical tool. In these 15 artists, a group of young artists from Bologna, and the Like Progect Collective, you can perceive the complementarity of different approaches and solutions. The justification for a discontinuity of experience, taken as a value, in place of conventionalized continuity. Their poetics are absolutely not identical; on the contrary, they are valid precisely because they contradict and complement each other, entering into dialectical opposition, thus generating new perspectives and broader insights into our time.
In the Shadow, light, sound, nature I believe it is valuable for eradicating social ills such as conformism or other-direction, gregariousness and massification, which are the fruit of a passive acquisition of standards of understanding and judgment that are identified with "good form" in morality as in politics, in dietetics, in the field of fashion, and above all in the world of art.
Being convinced of what the French art historian Henri Focillon stated: “The formal relationships within a work and between works constitute an order, a metaphor for the universe.” I believe the artists we've selected this year effectively contribute to bringing the narrative of our time's disorder out of the shadows. This is due precisely to their complementary approaches and diverse solutions, justifying a discontinuity of experience, assumed by each of them, as a value in place of an otherwise conventionalized continuity. Their poetics contradict and complement each other, entering into dialectical opposition and thus generating unexpected new perspectives and broader insights into our times, now increasingly immersed in AI issues.
The contemporary art of these artists, which you will see in the various rooms still filled with the smells of cheese, seems to pursue as its primary value an intentional breaking of the laws of probability that govern common discourse, challenging its presuppositions at the very moment in which it uses them to distort it.
Fourth edition
This exhibition, now in its fourth edition, is produced by the TRALAVIAEMILIAELUEST Association, in collaboration with TERREPADANE and the association Don't flip Fluvius art, is an event curated by Pierluigi Montani and Mario Ugolotti and will be included in the 2026 artistic cultural events of the city of Piacenza. It has my artistic direction, and communication is entrusted to Emanuele Baistrocchi while the general coordination is taken care of by Carlo Fornaini.
The "unnatural" configuration of the spaces inspires this project to highlight, through artistic interventions, elaborations in which each participating artist creates their own unique exhibition studio. The shadowy condition conveys, along with the artistic work, the diffusion of sounds capable of transforming the spaces into a singular sounding board. These possible visual and sound projections can impact the use of the spaces, intersecting the different languages. By rediscovering these mechanisms of interaction and fascination, we will seek to achieve a balanced proposal for a visionary operation, similar to the highly successful previous edition, called Thinking with your hands.
This year's artists
Oscar Accorsi, Emanuele Baistrocchi, Piero Bandini, Claudio Bernardi, Elia Bonetti, Maura Canepa, Danillo Cassano, Antonella De Nisco, Dino Molinari, Pierluigi Montani, Stefano Prazzoli, Manuela Sassi, Mario Ugolotti, Alberto Vettori, Tommaso Villani, From the Keyhole - group. Like Progect - collective.
The exhibition, directed by Sergio Buttiglieri, will be open from September 19th to October 10th. Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Cover image: Work by Pierluigo Montani (detail)
