In the Canova Rooms of the Museo Correr, a reflection on the poetics of time and matter unfolds, through the works of Canova and the installations of Julian Charrière

The Dialoghi Canoviani series continues at the Museo Correr, an exhibition project that brings contemporary artistic research into dialogue with the legacy of Antonio Canova. This second edition presents a comparison between the French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière (Morges, 1987; lives and works in Berlin) and the great master of Neoclassicism, through a path that unfolds across the Canova Rooms: Spiral Economy: Charrière and Canova

Julian Charrière, Spiral Economy, 2025. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2026 - Photo by Jens Ziehe

Curated by Chiara Squarcina and Pier Paolo Pancotto, with the collaboration of Claudia Cargnel, the exhibition—on view from April 30 to November 22, 2026—develops as a dialogue between epochs, revealing the poetry of matter. Julian Charrière’s works engage with Canova’s idealized forms, placing marble at the center as a living presence: both body and ghost, a vessel of beauty and a witness to deep time.

Central to the project is the concept of productive tension: on the one hand, the neoclassical ambition to immortalize forms in stone; on the other, the sense of precariousness and processuality that characterizes contemporary creative process. The exhibition showcases this dualism: permanence alongside erosion, the ideal alongside the inevitable, certainty alongside fluidity, the aesthetics of being alongside that of becoming.

Charrière’s proposal is presented in the form of a single, large-scale multisensory installation, closely articulated with the museum’s exceptional collection of Canova artworks, at the center of a contemporary art project for the first time. Visitors are thus immersed in a state of total perceptual recalibration where the ethical and intellectual ideals expressed by Canova are reformulated through Charrière’s gaze, reaffirming their enduring semantic relevance, both iconographically and iconologically. This exercise unfolds through an exhibition itinerary arranged in a sequence that alternates Canova’s creations with those of Charrière, many of which were conceived for the occasion: Venus Italica, 1804-12/Albedo, 2025; Icarus, 1777-79/Controlled Burn, 2022; Orpheus and Eurydice, 1773-76/Stone Speakers, 2024; Spiral Economy, 2025; Self-Portrait, 1812/Imperfect Lovers, 2025.

Through the adoption of various media—installation, photography, performance, sculpture, video—Julian Charrière reflects on the conflictual relationship that exists in the contemporary age between humanity and nature, technology and ecology, industry and science. Both drawing on the methodology as well as deconstructing the idea of a modern explorer or archaeologist, he conducts field work and analyzes the history of the environment to understand its future. To this end, he often travels to remote places on the planet, working in sometimes extreme conditions, not with the aim of contemplating beauty but rather of highlighting the vulnerability and criticality of those contexts.

Julian Charrière, Spiral Economy, 2025, Installation view: Midnight Zone, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland. © The Artist / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2026 - Photo by Jens Ziehe

The project for the neoclassical rooms and the Canova collection at the Museo Correr is based on an original, in some ways surprising, dialogue he established over time with Antonio Canova. This dialogue was inspired primarily by the artist’s ability to engage with the highest systems—particularly the dimensions of myth and utopia—through a universal plastic gesture, suspended in time and space. The Possagno master’s approach to creative action reflects his own, finding a harmony with his own aptitude for engaging with timeless themes of general interest.

Charrière's intervention (already invited to the 2017 Visual Arts Biennale and the 2012 and 2021 Architecture Biennale) aims to initiate a subtle yet profound reinterpretation of the Canova rooms through the adoption of a distinct syntactic and operational articulation—sculpture, video, photography, light, and sound. Thus, an unexpected encounter is born between Canova’s classical idealism, embodied primarily in marble, and Charrière’s analysis of the phenomenon of entropy and biological mutation, expressed through multimedia.

Albergo Pietrasanta: Thirty Years of Art and Hospitality in Versilia

In the historic center of Pietrasanta, just a few steps from Piazza Duomo, among galleries, studios, and artisan workshops, Albergo Pietrasanta opens the 2026 season in its thirtieth year of activity: a journey that, over three decades, has defined a form of hospitality in which the history of the place, the surrounding territory, and the owners’ collection intertwine—combining an intimate atmosphere with a direct relationship to art as a living experience.

ALBERGO PIETRASANTA, 2026. Ph. Carolina Sandretto

From the very beginning, the Albergo was founded on a clear intuition: not to exhibit a collection, but to share it. Not to separate art from the spaces of everyday life, but to let it enter daily routines, accompanying even the simplest gestures of a stay. In this sense, Albergo Pietrasanta is neither a museum nor a private home, but a permeable space, where artworks present themselves to the eye without mediation, like familiar presences.

It was in 1996 that Rosa Sandretto and Gilberto Sandretto decided to transform a historic palace into an open place—capable of welcoming and, at the same time, creating connections. The collection—built since the 1980s across Italy and international contexts—thus entered the hotel’s spaces without a formal curatorial order, following a logic of coexistence that preserves its living nature.

The works inhabit frescoed salons, accompany the passage through the rooms, and are encountered along corridors. They change over time, generating each year new configurations, new juxtapositions, new ways of seeing. In this continuous transformation, the character of the Albergo takes shape, as does the relationship guests establish with it: it is not uncommon to return in order to rediscover a room, an artwork, or the atmosphere born from their encounter.

ALBERGO PIETRASANTA, 2026. Ph. Carolina Sandretto

The twenty rooms and suites of Palazzo Barsanti Bonetti—each one unique—overlook an inner garden of century-old palm trees, an intimate and quiet space that sets the rhythm of the day. Breakfast served in the veranda, the light filtering through the salons, the suspended stillness of the garden: moments in which the presence of artworks naturally intertwines with the experience of hospitality.

The palace, built in the seventeenth century by the Gamba Martelli family and later owned by the Barsanti family, preserves traces of a long history tied to the city’s artistic production. Its monumental portal, frescoed rooms, and architectural stratifications reveal a deep connection with the work of artists and artisans who have made Pietrasanta an internationally recognized center.

In recent years, the arrival of Carolina Sandretto as part of the team—photographer and development manager—has opened new perspectives, while maintaining the continuity of a vision that remains profoundly familial and shared.

Pietrasanta is a place where art is not separate from life. Foundries, marble workshops, studios, and galleries coexist within the historic fabric of the town, shaping a landscape in which artistic production and everyday life are deeply intertwined. In this context, Albergo Pietrasanta becomes a privileged point of access to a network of relationships, practices, and knowledge.

During a stay, it is possible to engage directly with this reality: visiting the quarries of Carrara, accessing workshops, meeting artists and artisans, and moving between the Versilia coastline and nearby cities. Not a predefined itinerary, but a constellation of possibilities that takes shape through experience.

Just a few minutes from the historic center lies Magazzino Pietrasanta, an exhibition space of over 700 square meters that hosts part of the collection. A former industrial building, it represents a natural extension of the Albergo: a place where the works find a broader dimension while maintaining a connection to the project’s origins.

Over the course of thirty years, Albergo Pietrasanta has developed a distinct identity, maintaining a consistency that has not yielded to trends or shifts within the sector. Its specificity lies in the quality of the relationship between guests and the collection, and in its ability to make that relationship an integral part of the experience.

The thirtieth anniversary does not mark a turning point, but rather affirms the continuity of a project that, from the very beginning, chose to share art as a form of hospitality.

Palazzo Esposizioni hosts the exhibition “In umbra et luce” by Pierluigi Isola

Palazzo Esposizioni Roma is pleased to present “In umbra et luce” from 2 April to 3 May 2026, a major exhibition dedicated to the pictorial universe of Pierluigi Isola. The exhibition, promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, is curated by Barbara Jatta, Director of the Vatican Museums.

Pierluigi Isola, Cedars and Cup, 2016, oil on panel, 22 × 60 cm.

Pierluigi Isola’s painting unfolds within a liminal territory where precision of detail coexists with a rare emotional intensity. It is an artistic inquiry that evokes the reflections of James Hillman, who introduced the artist at the 54th Venice Biennale: in Isola’s works, Hillman recognized that “melancholic beauty” capable of holding the “slow gravity of time,” revealing an inner light that shines precisely beyond the boundaries of the human condition.

The exhibition itinerary is divided into several sections illustrating the principal subjects Pierluigi Isola has explored through his painting: from the ancestral landscapes of the Maremma to the parched, almost desert-like scenery of Basilicata, and on to still lifes with a metaphysical flavour, poised between an almost Flemish obsession with detail and the mastery of Morandi. Monumental trees also play a central role — immense eucalyptus trees and rows of pines rising like majestic vegetal propylea — alongside the artist’s iconic views of Rome.

In the latter, the artist captures a sharp, meridian light that dissolves the contours of buildings and domes, restoring to the Eternal City an unprecedented physiognomy, almost as if it were being named for the first time through light and shadow. One section of the exhibition is entirely devoted to works on paper, among which the artist’s latest essential exploration in the mixed-media series Deserts stands out.

The exhibition is further enriched by preparatory drawings and prints created for major commissions from the Vatican Apostolic Library and the Vatican Museums. This part of the exhibition offers deeper insight into the creative process behind the graphic work in all its stages: from conception to reconsideration, through to the final edition.

Born in 1958, the artist returns to Palazzo delle Esposizioni thirty years after his participation in the 12th Quadriennale d’Arte in 1996. In umbra et luce represents not only a celebration of his artistic maturity, but also a profound dialogue between the tradition of great Italian painting and a contemporary sensibility capable of probing the silence and light of places.