Artissima

The work of Giovanni Kronenberg (Milan, 1974, lives and works in Milan) comprises essentially sculptures and drawings: unusual or rare objects and natural artifacts – like rocks and stones, minerals and precious crystals, horns, bones, furs, sea sponge and ostrich eggs – which the artist defines as “not worn out by gazes”. Often collectible objects, Kronenberg operates on them with minimal insertions and transformations that bring together distant times, often unreachable. Through actions like twisting, occluding, replacement, and superimposition – but also, on the contrary, using slight and temporary interventions – the artist crafts unexpected objects with an eccentric, magnetic, and at the same time disturbing presence. The creation of a “combinatorial grammar” is the operation at the core of his work: a language that effects the slow sedimentation of the evocative qualities inherent in objects, on their subsequent alteration, through forms of intrusion. This relation between objects and reality, mostly ambiguous and elusive, also represents a key to Kronenberg’s drawings. Here, the image, suspended in an abstract dimension, gives rise to a space without references that seems to translate the figure’s presence into a kind of epiphany or apparition. 

Among his recent solo shows: Renata Fabbri, Milan (2024, 2017 and 2020); Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo (2023); z2o Sara Zanin, Rome (2016, 2019 and 2022); Quartz Studio, Turin (2020); Galleria Fuoricampo, Siena/Brussels (2014); and Studio Guenzani, Milan (2006, 2007 and 2012). Recent group exhibitions include: Museo Civico Villa La Rinchiostra, Massa (2021); Museo Diocesano, Foligno (2021); z2o Sara Zanin, Rome (2020); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2020); Civic Medieval Museum, Bologna (2020); Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza (2013); MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (2012); The Polish Institute of Rome (2012); Nomas Foundation, Rome (2012); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2011); Castello Colonna di Genazzano, Genazzano (2010); Peep-Hole, Milan (2009 and 2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Lugano (2009); MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome (2007); Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea, Monfalcone (2008); Arte all’Arte X, San Gimignano (2005); Viafarini, Milan (2004 and 2005); and Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como (2003).

Margherita Moscardini (Donoratico, 1981)the relations among transformation processes of urban, social and natural order belonging to specific geographies. She often focuses on abandoned and under demolition, whereby the demolitions’ waste system becomes a paradigm of the local complexities. Her practice favours the process and long-term projects, considering the context as a medium: the existing architecture, the landscape (meant as geo-morphological features) where the material environment is designed on, how the urban plans condition the behaviours of local communities. The context often suggests specific issues, materials and methods of the work, which she carries out through large-scale interventions, drawings, writings, scale models and video-documents.

Among her works: Istanbul City Hills_On the Natural History of Dispersion and States of Aggregation (2013), dealing with the recent urban transformation of Istanbul; 1XUnknown (1942-2018, to Fortress Europe with Love), which presents parts of the 15,000 bunkers of the Atlantic Wall defensive line, built by the Third Reich along the European Atlantic coast to defend Fortress Europe. Since 2016 she has been researching refugee camps as cities where a new idea of citizenship can be experimented. Her work The Fountains of Za’atari developed from the Za’atari refugee camp, conceived in 2012 in Jordan on the Syrian border.

Margherita Moscardini (b. 1981, Italy) obtained a BA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Bologna, in 2006 and in 2008 she attended the XIV ACVA Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, with Yona Friedman. In 2015 she was a research fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University. Recently, she held lectures and talks at MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; Columbia University, New York; SVA e ISCP, New York; Triennale di Milano; NABA, Milan. Over the past few years her work has been shown at MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; MMCA Changdong and SongEun ArtSpace, Seoul; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome; IIC of Istanbul and of Bruxelles; MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome; CCA, Plovdiv; MAMbo, Bologna; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Quadriennale di Roma, Rome; and Palazzo Reale, Milan.

Digging into the crevices of everyday experience and inspired by chance encounters with common objects, the works of Serena Vestrucci (b. Milan, 1986) interrogate and transform the ordinary through a diverse range of artistic processes and linguistic paradoxes. Fascinated by artefacts, situations, images, and materials picked out from everyday life (such as flags, pastels, fried squid, seasonal fruit), the artist turns these elements into the subject and raw material of her artistic experience. By modifying them and shifting them into fields of action different from their original context, Vestrucci draws attention to them, changing their appearance and filling them with new meanings, in an instantaneous and illusory poetics, barely visible and yet only apparently simple.
The outcome are works that, in their visual immediacy, subvert the perception of the work of art, changing its semantic value and inviting the viewer to rethink the way they observe and interpret their surroundings. Imbued with a subtle irony towards contemporaneity, Vestrucci’s works probe the obviousness of small things, giving back voice to what is often hidden, forgotten, or cast aside. Through a playful, yet blunt and provocative language, the artist elevates ambiguity to a necessary foundation for a more accurate understanding of reality.
After obtaining a BA from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Vestrucci moved to Venice, where in 2011 was awarded a residency at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation’s ateliers, and in 2013 obtained an MA in Design and Production of the Visual Arts at the IUAV University of Venice.

Selected solo exhibitions include Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021); FuoriCampo Gallery, Siena (2018); Gallery of Modern Art, Verona (2017); Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas, Palermo (2017); Marsèlleria Permanent Exhibition, Milan (2016); Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2015); and Otto Zoo Gallery, Milan (2013).

Her work has been featured in group shows at Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw (2022); Made in Cloister Foundation, Naples (2022); Imago Mundi Foundation, Treviso (2021); Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome (2020); Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2020 and 2015); Palazzo Del Medico, Carrara (2020); Michetti Foundation Museum, Francavilla al Mare, Chieti (2020); Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (2019); Blitz, Valletta, Republic of Malta (2019); Italian Cultural Institute, New York (2018); Italian Cultural Institute, London (2018); Santa Maria della Scala Museum, Siena (2018); Palazzo Reale, Milan (2017 and 2015); Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice (2017, 2012 and 2010); FRISE Künstlerhaus, Hamburg, (2014); Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno (2014); Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, Turin (2014); GAM Gallery of Modern Art, Milan (2012); Venetian Institute of Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Venice (2012); and Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands (2011).

In 2017 she was awarded the 18th edition of Premio Cairo, and she was selected by the City of Milan to conceive and realise a permanent artwork in the frame of the ArtLine Milano public art commission.