The must-see exhibitions and events in November

CCCP, Luigi Ghirri, Villa Pirondini 1990 © Eredi Luigi Ghirri

Reggio Emilia: “Felicitazioni! CCCP – Fedeli alla linea 1984-2024"

Forty years of history of the band that transcended the musical phenomenon to become part of the socio-cultural collective imagination: born (physically) in Reggio Emilia, conceived in Berlin and reborn to the world in that Emilia Paranoica of the 1980s, before falling along with the Wall at the end of the decade, CCCP – Fedeli alla Linea have shown themselves to be a phenomenon that far from died out in those long-forgotten years, a band that has remained capable of continually rediscovering its relevance thanks to intuitions that provide a reference point for a multitude of fans to this day. From 12 October 2023 to 11 February 2024 at the Chiostri di San Pietro in Reggio Emilia, CCCP – Fedeli alla Linea (aka Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Massimo Zamboni, Annarella Giudici and Danilo Fatur), forty years after the release of their first EP Ortodossia, reopen the drawers of a collective archive of images, sounds, texts, clothes, stage sets and experiences to let visitors relive those moments that marked their existence and that continue to create cultural links between opposing eras and places. The exhibition, which will emphasise the disruptive power of the texts and the almost mythological aura surrounding the group, will retrace their entire history. A career that crossed paths with some of the most characteristic names of the 1980s, from Pier Vittorio Tondelli to Luigi Ghirri and Amanda Lear. A chronological and anthological path will lead visitors on the discovery of the records released by CCCP, a behind-the-scenes look at the preparation of each of them, the story of the world around them and which inspired them, and then the universes generated through the sounds, lyrics, clothes and performances they created. The chronological narrative will also leave room for immersive settings – through sound installations, videos, words and images – so as to reconstruct the chaos of being CCCP, along with the daily experiences linked to the various creative phases, experiments and concerts.

Where: Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Chiostri di San Pietro
When: Until 11 February 2024
 

Milano: “Velasco Vitali - Listen Better"

On the 24th of October, inaugurated the exhibition Velasco Vitali. Listen Better, which is the result of a dialogue between the artist Velasco Vitali and the students of IULM's Master of Arts, valorisation and market, who curated, organised and communicated the exhibition, coordinated by Faculty Dean Prof. Vincenzo Trione and Prof. Anna Luigia De Simone. The exhibition proposes the theme of climate change, an issue that today not only concerns the scientific community, but also pervades the lives of individuals. Vitali conducts his investigation of this issue supported by a romantic approach, understanding the landscape as a source of contrasting feelings: on the one hand wonder before the greatness and power of nature, on the other hand terror in the face of human impotence. Velasco Vitali. Listen Better is divided into three moments (A Fistful of Dust; I Perceived the Scene, and Predicted the Future; Waste Land), each inspired by the image of transient places, reminiscent of the ruins of a city in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Set up in the Contemporary Exhibition Hall of IULM 6 and in some external spaces of the Campus, the exhibition will be open only to the IULM community free of charge until 24 November 2023.

Where: Contemporary Exhibition Hall di IULM
When: Until 24 November 2023
 

Collezione Peggy Guggenheim © Association Marcel Duchamp, by SIAE 2023

Venezia: “Marcel Duchamp e la seduzione della copia"

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy, curated by Paul B. Franklin, a Paris-based art historian and an internationally acclaimed expert on the life and work of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). This is the very first exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection devoted exclusively to Duchamp, among the most influential and innovative artists of the twentieth century and a longtime friend and adviser to the American patron Peggy Guggenheim. The show features some sixty artworks dating from 1911 to 1968. These include iconic objects from the permanent collection of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection as well as from other Italian and American institutions and several lesser-known artworks in private hands. In reproducing his work in different media, on various scales, and in limited editions, Duchamp illustrated that certain duplicates and the originals from which they were replicated offered comparable forms of aesthetic pleasure. In so doing, Duchamp also redefined what constitutes a work of art and, by extension, the identity of the artist. Examining the radically innovative and varied ways that Duchamp quoted himself over the course of his long career as an artist, Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy is organized in several interrelated sections. The exhibition thus offers a rare opportunity to examine a significant selection of the artist’s works in relation to one another, an exercise, as Duchamp frequently argued, essential to comprehending his aesthetic project.

Where: Peggy Guggenheim Collection
When: Until 18 March 2024
 

Roma: “Favoloso Calvino"

Most of what Calvino has to say has to do with the gaze, with the visual dimension, meaning: with ideas of space. Real spaces, environments and places from his lived experience; imaginary spaces, the result of transfigurations and flights of fancy; concrete objects, either described with painstaking accuracy or subjected to ingenious symbolic interpretations; and, again, the space par excellence, the cosmos, and virtual spaces evoked or invented by works of art. The exhibition offers visitors a fascinating journey through Calvino’s imagery by investigating his relationship with the visual arts, giving rise to a genuine perceptual adventure. What emerges is above all the variety and richness of the ways in which the Ligurian writer has depicted man’s relationship with reality through a seamless succession of unexpected perspectives, shifting focuses, and stimulating questions. One hundred years after his birth, Calvino confirms himself as one of the most valuable of our contemporary classics: an author capable of offering new generations of readers suggestions and tools to orient themselves in their own time.  Facing the present indeed requires us to learn to view the reality surrounding us with different eyes and, at the same time, to make visible what the mind and imagination conceive. In Calvino’s vision, rationality and imagination nourish each other, while planning and inventiveness alternate and intertwine, resulting in a work that is diverse and multifaceted, rigorous and unpredictable. In a word: fabulous.

Where: Scuderie del Quirinale 
When: Until 4 February 2024
 

Milano, 1996 © Archivio Gabriele Basilico

Milano: “Gabriele Basilico - Le mie città"

Ten years after his death, Milan is devoting a major exhibition to Gabriele Basilico, divided between two exhibition venues: Palazzo Reale and Triennale Milano. This is the first great tribute that the city in which Basilico was born and lived has paid to the photographer and his cosmopolitan gaze, capable of capturing the essence of all cities. The exhibition at Triennale, curated by Giovanna Calvenzi and Matteo Balduzzi, presents the documentation work Basilico has done on his own city over the course of nearly 40 years, recounting the architecture, building fabric, monuments, urban development and transformations of Milan and its metropolitan area. More than any other city, Milan offered Basilico the opportunity to experiment, to undertake research with breadth of themes, time at his disposal, and capacity for movement. The exhibition design is by Francesco Librizzi.

Where: Triennale Milano 
When: Until 7 January 2024
 

Milano: “Silia Ka Tung - Garden of Heavenly Delights"

Only a few more days to visit the new selection of works by London-based artist Silia Ka Tung at Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea. This comprises a series of paintings, drawings, hanging textiles, sewn canvas sculptures and installations. Her work explores themes of identity, folklore and memory with a unique fusion of elements from different cultures: from Chinese and Greek mythology, Japanese manga, and Korean media to Hindu philosophy. Ka Tung creates a fairy tale wonderland, a unique magical dreamscape inhabited by mysterious creatures that personify magic, wisdom and folklore inspired the many wondrous phenomena of the natural world. ‘Garden of Heavenly Delights’ is an intriguing mix of modern, sci-fi like fantasy combined with the influences of Chinese culture and tradition. Order and chaos go hand in hand with Yin and yang, the philosophical concept that describes opposite but interconnected forces. This forms a visual journey that tells the complexity of nature through colorful folktales and mythology.

Where: Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea
When: Until 10 November 2023
 

Roma: “Ferrari Sheppard - Crucible"

The first exhibition in Italy by Ferrari Sheppard (Chicago 1983), currently considered one of the most interesting American artists of the latest generations. In the rooms of the Casino dei Principi, the artist presents eighteen works, eleven of which were created especially for the Roman exhibition at Villa Torlonia, in addition to the video Be in My Mind, set up in the dining room of the building, decorated with tempera murals depicting views of the Gulf of Naples, exhibited for the first time to the public. Ferrari Sheppard's canvases depict the American way of life in the third millennium. The artist places strongly characterised characters in domestic and everyday atmospheres, with a neo-expressionist and chromatically lively style, not so distant, in its essentiality, from the iconographies proposed, during the Ventennio, by the masters of the Roman School, well represented in the nearby Casino Nobile Museum, with which Sheppard ideally compares himself. The historical atmosphere after World War II also returns in a series of paintings inspired by the climate of freedom experienced in Italy, but not only, in the days immediately following the liberation, when jazz music was used by American soldiers as a weapon against the regime. 

Where: Musei di Villa Torlonia, Casino dei Principi
When: Until 7 January 2024
 

Torino: “Mirò a Torino"

The exhibition includes approximately 100 works including paintings, temperas, watercolours, drawings, sculptures and ceramics from French museums and private collectors, complemented by a series of graphic works, books and documents. The curatorship is entrusted to the art critic Achille Bonito Oliva, one of Italy's leading and most esteemed artists, together with Maïthé Vallès-Bled (former director of French museums) and Vincenzo Sanfo, art expert and organiser of major international exhibitions. The important nucleus of works covers a period of six decades of the career of Joan Miró, exponent of the Surrealist current: from 1924 to 1981, with a focus in particular on the transformation of pictorial languages that the Catalan artist began to develop in the first half of the 1920s and documenting his artistic metamorphoses. The exhibition itinerary, divided into thematic areas, is accompanied by an important photographic section and some previously unseen videos that recount the private and public life of the great master of European Surrealism. 

Where: Mastio della Cittadella
When: Until 14 January 2024
 

Passageway Inside - Downside, 2011 - 2012, 52 navi Ph. Michele Alberto Sereni @ Courtesy Magonza

Varese: “Wolfgang Laib - Passageway"

Until 25 February 2024, the Villa and Panza Collection in Varese hosts an exhibition dedicated to Wolfgang Laib (Metzingen, Germany, 1950), one of the great masters of contemporary art. The exhibition project, with the evocative title Passageway, is part of a four-year programme of exhibitions dedicated to some of the themes that have characterised the research and collection of Giuseppe Panza di Biumo: "nature and form", "rhythm and dynamics", "sign and message", "light and colour". In particular, Passageway closes the cycle dedicated to "nature and form" by picking up the baton of Ex Natura. New Works from the Panza di Biumo Collection, and generating new suggestions and further insights into the theme. The exhibition, conceived in close collaboration with the artist, in the spaces of the Scuderie and the Rimesse per le Carrozze presents four large installations - one of which is new and created especially for this occasion.  Beeswax, rice, stone, paper and brass are the starting point for creations that tell of a vulnerable nature to be respected and that invite us to act as part of fragile ecosystems. Indeed, since the late 1970s, Wolfgang Laib has been outlining his creative vocabulary through a constant and inseparable exchange with the natural element: collecting pollen for his minimalist works with bright yellow soil, working the material of his beeswax sculptures, using grains of rice, symbol of spiritual nourishment, fragile and sensual. Profoundly marked by his travels in India and South-East Asia, the artist in his formal vocabulary fuses Eastern and Western cultures: geometric figures and bodies such as rectangles, circles, pyramids and cones with only a few alterations become stylised, archetypal motifs that transcend the visual experience and lead to a spiritual dimension.

Where: Villa Panza
When: Until 25 February 2024
 

@ Delfino Sisto Legnani e Alessandro Saletta, DSL Studio

Milano: “Paraventi: Folding Screens form the 17th to the 21st Centuries"

Extensive exhibition curated by Nicholas Cullinan that investigates the histories and semantics of folding screens by tracing trajectories of cross-pollination between East and West, processes of hybridization between different art forms and functions, collaborative relationships between designers and artists, and the emergence of newly created works. As explained by Nicholas Cullinan, “Painting or sculpture? Art or furniture? Utilitarian or ornamental? Decorative, functional, architectural or theatrical? This innovative exhibition examines the many questions and paradoxes surrounding the unfolding history of the paravent. This history of the folding screen is one of cultural migration (from East to West), hybridisation and of what is concealed and revealed. As we shall explore, this history, and especially the way it manifests in the present, is one of liminal objects and of liminality itself; in the process collapsing the rigid distinctions and hierarchies between the different disciplines of art and architecture, decoration and design.”

Where: Fondazione Prada
When: Until 22 February 2024
 

Lodi: “Alessandro Loschiavo – 9idee"

Two years after its foundation, the Spazio D' gallery in Lodi continues its programme of investigation into the work of contemporary artists and designers and presents the exhibition '9idee, nove progetti di Alessandro Loschiavo'. A solo exhibition that brings together nine of the designer's projects realised for the Aliantedizioni brand over the last two decades. In fact, Alessandro Loschiavo helped found the Aliantedizioni limited edition brand on the threshold of the 2000s and subsequently took on the role of artistic director, designing the majority of the items in the collection and thus defining its overall spirit. The exhibition presents nine pieces of furniture and small home accessories each distinguished by an innovative idea and some common characteristics. These include: the search for formal synthesis in the functional response; the pursuit of an idea of overall lightness; substantial mono-materiality with a view to easy recovery and disposal at the end of life; a subtle Mediterranean flavour.

Where: Microgalleria Spazio | D’
When: Until 17 November 2023
 

Milano: “Sung Tieu - The Ruling"

Ordet presents The Ruling, the first solo exhibition by Sung Tieu (Vietnamese artist based in Berlin) in Italy. Tieu’s practice is grounded in historical and political research, and her installations often feature documentary and fictional elements. In The Ruling, the artist investigates how standardization, measurability and quantifiability are deployed as tools of extraction. In 1897, during the French colonial rule of Indochina, Governor-General Paul Doumer issued a decree that affected the ancient chǐ measurement units widely prevalent in the region before colonization. This French-initiated reduction, amounting to seven centimeters, was carried out under the pretext of broader efforts to standardize and unify various aspects of cultural life in Indochina while spreading “la civilisation française.” This seemingly minor alteration, which eventually led to the near elimination of the ancient measurement unit, had far-reaching implications, particularly affecting the land taxation and exploitation of the majority of Vietnamese peasants. The Ruling recalls the intricate interplay between colonial interests, bureaucratic and administrative governance strategies, and their impact as lasting legacies of colonial oppression—revealing the asymmetry between the metric system’s universality and its implementation as a tool of exploitation, capital accumulation, and world trade.

Where: Ordet
When: Until 2 December 2023
 

Installation view "Iwan Baan: Moments in Architecture" © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Mark Niedermann

Weil am Rhein: “Iwan Baan: Moments in Architecture”

Iwan Baan is one of today’s leading photographers of architecture and the built environment. His images document the growth of global megacities, explore traditional and informal housing structures, and portray buildings by prominent contemporary architects including Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, Kazuyo Sejima, and Tatiana Bilbao. From October 2023 to March 2024, the Vitra Design Museum presents the first major retrospective of Baan’s oeuvre. The exhibition “Iwan Baan: Moments in Architecture” reflects the photographer’s wide scope by drawing up a panorama of global architecture in the early twenty-first century, of its urban and social contexts, and of the people who use it. The exhibition features examples from all areas of Baan’s work and includes film footage as well as rarely published photographs of traditional and informal architecture around the world – from the round Yaodong villages of China to the rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, from self-built multi-storey dwellings in Cairo to the Torre David in Caracas. “What's important is the story,” Iwan Baan says, “which is very intuitive and fluid. I am not so interested in the timeless architectural image as much as the specific moment in time, the place, and the people there – all the unexpected, unplanned moments in and around the space, how people interact with that space, and the stories that are unfolding there.”

Where: Vitra Design Museum
When: Until 3 March 2024
 

© Filippo Pincolini

Milano: “Gabriella Crespi”

Until 25 January 2024, Nilufar presents the 'Gabriella Crespi' exhibition, a unique opportunity to experience the universe of the luminary of Italian design. Curated by Nina Yashar, founder of Nilufar, the exhibition is hosted at the headquarter in Via Della Spiga 32, in the heart of Milan, a city that played a major role in the designer's life, nurturing her creative development and her inimitable expression of precious simplicity. The pieces on display turn the spotlight on the mastery of Gabriella Crespi's work. The 'Mushroom', 'Obelisk', 'Kaleidoscope' and 'Shield' lamps transcend functionality to embody a synthesis of form and purpose, projecting an ethereal luminosity that transforms spaces. The intricate 'Plurimi' collection, with its modular and transformative furnishing elements, highlights its innovative spirit. The combination with Maximilian Marchesani's light creations enriches the exhibition with an original contemporary touch. The career of Gabriella Crespi (1922-2017) is characterised by dynamic artistic periods. Her design philosophy was characterised by discreet elegance and futuristic elements. In the 1970s and 1980s, Crespi avoided adhering to dominant artistic trends and instead developed a completely new aesthetic. Fundamental projects such as 'Rising Sun' and 'Plurimi' demonstrate his ability to transform geometric simplicity into functional works of art, a careful interweaving of artistic vision and meticulous craftsmanship. The interplay of bamboo, rattan and bronze - each imbued with rich symbolism and meaning - has distinguished Gabriella Crespi's artistic vocabulary. Her creations fully capture the peculiarities of these materials, expertly blending natural elements with a refined artistic sensibility. The designer carefully selected materials, fascinated by their visual aesthetics and tactile connection, taking inspiration from her many travels and cultural encounters.

Where: Nilufar Gallery
When: Until 25 January 2024