There is a tendency to think that the most prestigious art galleries feel at home in the centre of Milan, in the streets of Brera or the Cinque Vie. And that if they are not necessarily within the Navigli circle, they are at least within the outer ring road. The truth, however, is that some of the most interesting realities are to be found well beyond these boundaries, some gathered in districts, others happy to grow and grow something new out of the way.

Below is a selection of five galleries selected for this itinerary

Zero…

“The exhibition space and its architectural and conceptual features have always played a central role in the development of the gallery’s history and vision.  Changing this factor every three to four years goes in the direction of imagining the artists’ work in relation to this. After a solo exhibition or two, it became important, from our point of view, to try to provide the artist with new spatial material for new challenges. The places we interpreted had, and have, peculiarities that explore further territories than the idea of the white cube. […] The new space is embedded in an experimental architectural and social situation. The landscape surrounding the gallery has some features that I like a lot, with that hotel standing out in the background beyond the courtyard. And the low buildings, mostly warehouses, that surround it. […] One breathes new air around here or, at least, one projects the desire for a new humanity in this landscape and it is stimulating especially for the evolution of a possible reading of contemporaneity.

ZERO...
Via Carlo Boncompagni 44
 20139, Milano
www.galleriazero.it

Fanta

Founded by Alessio Baldissera, Gloria de Risi and Alberto Zenere, Fanta-MLN firstly opened as a project space in 2015 in a former warehouse under the railway system in Milan, and became a gallery in October 2018. Exploring a variety of artistic visions and media, the gallery’s program focuses on Italian and international emerging artists, alternating solo exhibitions with curated group shows. A particular interest is given to artists whose practice investigates our contemporaneity and the systems that regulate it, questioning more or less explicitly their linearity and normativity.

Fanta-MLN
via Asiago 12, 20128 Milano
www.fanta-mln.it

Francesca Minini

Founded in 2006 in the former industrial district of east Milan, Francesca Minini hosts a vibrant Italian and international program in the gallery.
The exhibition space is constantly evolving, fully available to the artists’ creative freedom.
Over the years it has hosted site-specific projects with Jan De Cock and Daniel Buren and special projects on the gallery façade with Francesco Simeti. The gallery moves on different levels of research. A keen eye is kept on the Italian panorama of emerging artists, in continuity with the artists who have followed the gallery’s program since the early years, such as Flavio Favelli and Riccardo Previdi. In recent years the gallery has opened up to the world of photography and performance with the work of Jacopo Benassi and Ambra Castagnetti.
International research offers a focus on important South American artists such as Runo Lagomarsino, Armando Andrade Tudela, Elena Damiani, Daniel de Paula and Sol Calero and a careful program of group exhibitions focused on the latest trends, with Mika Tajima, Daniel Steegmann Mangranè and Ivana Basic.
The international panorama also embraces artists of different nationalities such as Ali Kazma, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Landon Metz, Becky Beasley, Matthias Bitzer, and Armin Boehm.
From painting to sculpture to daring installations Francesca Minini aspires to offer its audiences a broad artistic scene.
The gallery also follows established artists such as Daniel Buren, Sheila Hicks, Robert Barry and the Estate of Carla Accardi and Dan Graham.
There are numerous collaborations with spaces outside the gallery from Museums to private Institutions to Italian and international Biennials.
Francesca Minini is active in the publication of catalogs and artists’ books and actively participates in supporting performances by its artists in the continuous search for new spaces to host them.

Francesca Minini
Via Privata Massimiano, 25, 20134 Milano
www.francescaminini.it

Prometeo Gallery Ida Pisani

Prometeo Gallery was born on the initiative of Ida Pisani, after a long history as a cultural association that evolved in 2005 into a gallery based in Milan and Lucca. It has always distinguished itself as a catalyst for the social and political demands of multimedia visual artists.

The project opened with “Perra” by the Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo (b. 1974), who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale as best artist under 35 in 2005. This award was previously given in 2001 to Aníbal López (A-1 53167) (b. 1964): another Guatemalan artist with whom the gallery began a relationship, interrupted by his untimely death at the age of 50 years old. Galindo's work "Tierra" (2013) became part of the MoMA’s permanent collection in 2021, as the third work of the artist acquired by the museum. In the same year, she was awarded with the "Robert Rauschenberg Award”.The first Italian exhibition by the Spanish master Santiago Sierra (b. 1966) "Trabajos Italianos”, dates back to 2007. Among the most recent works, Sierra is behind the muddy Balenciaga runway at Paris Fashion Week 2022, taking inspiration from the work "House in Mud" realized in 2005 on the ground floor of the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover. In 2017, four artists represented by Prometeo Gallery were invited to the 14th edition of Documenta: Stefano Tsivopoulos (b. 1973), Regina José Galindo, Mary Zygouri (b. 1973), Hiwa K (b. 1975). Among the artists invited to show at the Venice Biennale over the years: Ivan Moudov (b. 1975), Giuseppe Stampone (b. 1974), Regina José Galindo, Mary Zygouri, Stefano Tsivopoulos, Hiwa K.
In 2019, the gallery has started representing the work of the Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan (b. 1989), who was included in Art Review's "Power 100" in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, Prometeo Gallery has started representing the work of the Italian-Senegalese visual artist Binta Diaw (b. 1995) with her first solo show at the gallery entitled “La plage noire”.

PROMETEO GALLERY IDA PISANI
Via Giovanni Ventura, 6 - Via Massimiano, 20134 Milano
www.prometeogallery.com

M77 Gallery

M77 opened in 2014 with the purpose to make room for new ideas in Milan’s contemporary art scene. Offering its 1000 m2 space as a platform for dialogue and a place for ambitious projects, M77 hosts exhibitions with a strong site-specific approach and curatorial vision.
The core mission of the gallery is to foster a reputable and varied roster of artists by bringing their ideas and vision to fruition and establish itself exponentially as a cultural epicenter. M77 strives to expand its International presence through its participation in the best art fairs world-wide. Gradually over the last five years, the gallery has embarked and expanded on a clear exhibition program focused on very personal declinations of the conceptual attitude, often preferring to shed light on underrepresented mid-career international artists and on the more experimental, less known aspects of the production of renowned Post-War Italian Masters.

M77
via Mecenate 77, 20138 Milano
www.m77gallery.com