top of page

Saturday, October 18 at 6 p.m., marks the opening of Apparitions Carlo Alberto Rastelli at Il Pomo da DaMo Gallery in Imola. On view are “constellated” portraits, veined wooden surfaces, and landscapes from another dimension. The artist, a finalist at both the Premio Combat and Premio Cairo, presents a body of work that expands perception, where abstraction and reality blur and shift.


Shiota Chiharu, Uncertain Journey, 2016/2019
Carlo Alberto Rastelli, Doctor Who


The solo exhibition Apparitions—curated by Francesca Baboni and Stefano Taddei—questions the act of seeing itself. The real and the abstract touch, overlap, and sometimes deny one another, leaving behind a web of clues rather than a linear narrative.


Rastelli — finalist of both the Premio Combat and Premio Cairo — brings visual memory and the present into tension. His works draw upon photographic archives and historical imagery, renewed through a layered painterly practice: iridescent acrylics, stencils, and even masking tape are used to modulate surfaces, while fir wood panels reveal their natural veins like a seismograph of time.


In his group portraits, the human face is never stable; it dissolves into constellations, opening to metamorphoses that suggest a humanity in transit — restless within its temporal and spatial limits. Elsewhere, figures are obscured: galaxies and “black holes” veil their features and anatomies — as in the emblematic portrait of Andrea Costa, the Imola-born figure who traversed anarchism and socialism. Pastel hues merge with dark backgrounds and Romantic echoes: in the landscapes, one perceives traces of Böcklin and Turner, specters of an insistent memory.


The canvas series Pet Sematary — a declared homage to Stephen King — shifts the focus toward landscape. Latvian forests observed from life are populated by crosses and skulls, activated through dripping and chromatic bursts that suppress the human figure until it vanishes. The result is a perceptual slippage: a nearby elsewhere, almost within reach, where reference becomes uncertain and every image seems to arrive from an unaligned time.


Philip Guston If This Be Not I 1945 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Univerity purchase, Kende Sale Fund, The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Carlo Alberto Rastelli, Ein Handschuh Pittura

“Reality and abstraction blend in a suspended narrative, resistant to any univocal reading,” explain curators Francesca Baboni and Stefano Taddei. “Faces and groups turn into constellations: humanity appears to yearn for transcendence, to overcome its limits,” they add.


Rather than illustrating reality, Apparitions destabilizes it: painting becomes a space of unstable translation, where images emerge as traces and sediments rather than as completed figures. An invitation to look longer — against the haste of the present.




Il Pomo da DaMo Contemporary Art

Imola


Date 18 ottobre 2025 – 8 febbraio 2026

 



 
 

The Premio Lissone 2025 has been announced — the historic biennial event dedicated to painting, which continues to stand out as one of the most significant formats in the Italian contemporary art scene.


Shiota Chiharu, Uncertain Journey, 2016/2019
Premio Lissone 2025 A cura di A cura di Lorenzo Balbi, Hanne Mugaas, Stefano Raimondi


Realized with the support of Regione Lombardia as part of the Avviso Unico 2025, this year’s edition also celebrates the 25th anniversary of the opening of the MAC – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Lissone – presenting a renewed and international outlook.


Under the artistic direction of Stefano Raimondi, the new format of the Lissone Prize takes shape as a large-scale exhibition spread across all three floors of the museum, where the works of six Italian and international artists engage in an open dialogue of exchange and research. One work by each artist will be acquired and added to the MAC’s permanent collection.


The curators of the Lissone Prize 2025 are three prominent figures from the international contemporary art scene: Lorenzo Balbi, Director of MAMbo – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna, who has invited Viola Leddi and Valerio Nicolai; Hanne Mugaas, Director of Kunsthall Stavanger and Head of Programme at OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, who has selected Cecilia Granara and Giuliana Rosso; and Stefano Raimondi, Director of the MAC, who has chosen Landon Metz and Ariel Schlesinger.


“I have never seen art as a competition but as a dialogue,” remarks Raimondi. “The concept of a prize where one artist ‘wins’ feels distant from the spirit of our time. This edition aims to celebrate collaboration and the exchange of ideas as the founding values of the contemporary artistic community.”


Philip Guston If This Be Not I 1945 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Univerity purchase, Kende Sale Fund, The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Valerio Nicolai, Lo Scolone, 2020

The selection of artists — all born between the 1980s and 1990s — reflects the original spirit of the historic Lissone Prize, when emerging talents brought the energy of their research into a shared space for debate and growth. “It is highly significant,” notes Mayor Laura Borella, “that all invited artists belong to a generation capable of renewing the gaze on painting, in continuity with the tradition and spirit of the museum’s collections.”


Carolina Minotti, Councillor for Culture, highlights how the Prize regains its international dimension, fostering dialogue between European institutions and Italian artists working abroad, in a continuous exchange of perspectives and artistic languages.


Founded in 1946, the Lissone Prize was one of Italy’s earliest and most prestigious awards dedicated to painting, marking an important chapter in the history of national contemporary art. After historic editions featuring artists such as Afro, Vedova, Turcato, and Morlotti, the Prize was re-established in 1999 and made biennial in 2006, alternating with the Lissone Design Prize.


Shiota Chiharu, Accumulation - Searching for the Destination 2014/2019
Giuliana Rosso, La galassia di Andromeda, 2019

Today, with its 2025 edition, the MAC reaffirms its mission to build bridges between generations and geographies, transforming the Lissone Prize from a competition into a platform for dialogue and reflection on the present state of painting.


MAC Museo d'Arte Contemporanea

Lissone


Date 19 ottobre 2025 – 18 gennaio 2026

 



 
 

For the first time in Italy, the MAO – Museum of Oriental Art in Turin presents the major solo exhibition Chiharu Shiota: The Soul Trembles, dedicated to the internationally acclaimed Japanese artist.


Shiota Chiharu, Uncertain Journey, 2016/2019
Shiota Chiharu, Uncertain Journey, 2016/2019

The project is curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and creator of the original concept, and by Davide Quadrio, Director of MAO, with curatorial assistance from Anna Musini and Francesca Filisetti.


After being presented at prestigious international institutions such as the Grand Palais in Paris, the Busan Museum of Art, the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane and the Shenzhen Art Museum, the exhibition arrives at MAO as an Italian premiere — and for the first time ever in a museum of Asian art — with a project of extraordinary visual and emotional power.


Through drawings, photographs, sculptures, and monumental installations, The Soul Trembles retraces Shiota’s entire artistic journey, revealing the poetic strength of a language that explores memory, identity, and the fragility of existence. Often inspired by personal experiences, her works investigate the intangible — memories, dreams, emotions — transforming them into spaces of collective contemplation where matter intertwines with the invisible.


Among the featured pieces are some of Shiota’s most iconic installations: Where Are We Going? (2017–2019), a metaphor for travel and uncertain futures; Uncertain Journey (2016), where skeletal boat forms entangled in red threads evoke encounters and destinies; In Silence (2008), a burnt piano wrapped in black thread symbolising the silence that follows destruction; Reflection of Space and Time (2018), reflecting on presence and absence; Inside–Outside (2009), exploring the boundaries between public and private; and the monumental Accumulation – Searching for the Destination (2021), composed of hundreds of suspended suitcases — symbols of memory, migration, and personal journeys.


Philip Guston If This Be Not I 1945 Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Univerity purchase, Kende Sale Fund, The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Shiota Chiharu, In Silence 2002/2019

As in all MAO projects, The Soul Trembles is conceived as a living organism, accompanied by a rich public programme of performances, screenings, talks and conferences, along with educational workshops for schools, families, and visitors of all ages.


The Chiharu Shiota exhibition MAO Turin is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale, featuring texts by Mami Kataoka and Davide Quadrio, contributions by international scholars, and an extensive visual apparatus.


Starting from 19 November 2025, an unpublished work by the artist, The Moment the Snow Melts, will also be on view at MUDEC in Milan as part of the project The Sense of Snow, curated by Sara Rizzo — an installation that uses the transience of snow as a metaphor for human relationships.


Shiota Chiharu, Accumulation - Searching for the Destination 2014/2019
Shiota Chiharu, Accumulation - Searching for the Destination 2014/2019

With The Soul Trembles, MAO reaffirms its mission to foster dialogue between East and West, offering Italian audiences an immersive and poetic exploration of the universal language of the soul.


MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale


Date 22 ottobre 2025 – 28 giugno 2026

 



 
 
bottom of page