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Fragilità. Visioni di una forza formativa
Dadamaino François Morellet Arcangelo Sassolino Günter Umberg Grazia Varisco
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12/03/2026 - 06/05/2026: Exhibitions
A arte Invernizzi
Press release
Fragilità. Visioni di una forza formativa
Dadamaino François Morellet Arcangelo Sassolino Günter Umberg Grazia Varisco
OPENING THURSDAY 12 MARCH 2026 6 P.M.
On Thursday, 12 March 2026, at 6 p.m., A arte Invernizzi gallery opens the exhibition Fragilità. Visioni di una forza formativa, curated by Davide Mogetta. The exhibition aims to explore the formative tension of fragility in works by Dadamaino, François Morellet, Arcangelo Sassolino, Günter Umberg, and Grazia Varisco. The project stems from a dialogue between Günter Umberg and Davide Mogetta about the persistence in his art, since the 1970s, of a motif that is both strictly individual and universal: the encounter with vulnerability.
In recent years, the theme of fragility has permeated reflections on art in various ways, and the experience of the fragility of living beings, and more specifically of humans, has returned to the forefront: not only as a consequence of major natural crises, but also as a result of the political and social upheavals that surround us. We certainly want to take care of fragility in order to safeguard what is fragile, but we also sometimes want to change its meaning in order to draw new energy from it. In either case, however, it seems that fragility and resistance must ultimately remain separate. In short, we must either safeguard the fragile or transform it into something strong. Yet, at least in some artistic research, it seems possible to recognize another path. It is the attempt to grasp fragility within the same formative tension. Not so that that force saves it, or makes it react and transforms it, but so that fragility can become a form of works that are powerful in themselves: the more powerful the more evident their fragility. Fragility then does not become a formative force, it is one; and it concretely weaves the works together, shaping them. It does so starting from their material, through the way it is manipulated, and up to the way in which they can be exhibited and observed.
This hypothesis is explored through the works of five leading figures belonging to different generations of international art. Their works have been presented together on several occasions, but the combinations proposed in this project are unprecedented. They invite us to question the meaning of fragility in their creative paths, whether through affinity or contrast. It may be a trait of inner experience that we can grasp; it may be the result of reflection, sometimes on the human condition, sometimes on the limits of reason, which always spills over into artistic feeling and doing. In all cases, fragility characterizes, in unique ways, the very making of their works. But this does not coincide in any of their research with a weak or defeatist stance, nor with leaving behind the fragility from which they start. Rather, it forms a single body with imaginative tension, generating forms that are at once precarious and solid, stable and restless. The exhibition thus offers five visions of a formative force that is nothing other than fragility. It invites us to observe it in the works themselves, insofar as their becoming form makes it possible to grasp references to further dimensions of experience.
The exhibition opens with François Morellet’s work π piquant neonly n°10, 1=10° (2008) in dialogue with π piquant neonly n°9, 1=6° (2007) presented in the room on the upper floor. The two works explore the relationship between geometric-systematic rigor and the surprise of chance, through the use of a fragile and brightly lit material such as neon tubes. The same space also displays recent works by Arcangelo Sassolino, two in concrete and steel and two in glass, steel and polyester, which betray the expected solidity of their materials with their vulnerable appearance.
In the adjacent room, Günter Umberg presents works in wax and pigment on paper, dating back to the early 1970s, the germinal moment of his career. In these works, he transforms his own personal, unrepeatable experience, imprinting an artistic form that opens up new and unexpected images.
On the lower floor of the gallery is Grazia Varisco’s installation Reticenze, created especially for the occasion, in which the artist deforms and reforms metal lattice structures, suspending the instant of movement, which dialogues with four works by Dadamaino, from the cycles “Il movimento delle cose” and “Sein und Zeit,” created in the 1990s, whose lines chasing each other on polyester sheets seem to make visible the paradox of a gesture that is all the more complete the more it accepts that it cannot be completed once and for all.
The exhibition ends with a recent installation by Günter Umberg, in which the rhythmic relationship between the six individual works that compose it generates an attractive force, a desire to get as close as possible to the work, even to touch it, but which must remain forbidden in order not to destroy it. Attraction and distance find themselves in a constructive conflict.
A bilingual catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition, with an essay by Davide Mogetta. The catalogue will also include reproductions of the artworks on display and an update of the artists’ biographical information.
EXHIBITION: Fragilità. Visioni di una forza formativa
exhibited artists: Dadamaino François Morellet Arcangelo Sassolino Günter Umberg Grazia Varisco
CURATED BY: Davide Mogetta
CATALOGUE WITH AN ESSAY BY: Davide Mogetta
EXHIBITION PERIOD: 12 MARCH - 6 MAY 2026
OPENING HOURS: FROM MONDAY TO FRIDAY 10 A.M. - 1 P.M. 2.30-6.30 P.M., SATURDAY BY APPOINTMENT
External link for further information
Time:
da lunedì a venerdì
10.00 - 13.00
14.30 - 18.30
Sabato su appuntamento
Where: Galleria A arte Invernizzi, Milano - A arte Invernizzi
Via D. Scarlatti 12
20124 Milano Italy |
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