Enej Gala brings his “Acquaintances” to the window of garage BENTIVOGLIO

Until 6 December 2025, garage BENTIVOGLIO presents a new site-specific intervention dedicated to artist Enej Gala, who animates the street-facing window of via del Borgo di San Pietro in Bologna with three marionettes from the series Acquaintances (2020–2021).

Enej Gala, Tri marionete iz seije. Acquaintances, 2020-2021, garage BENTIVOGLIO, Palazzo Bentivoglio ph. Carlo Favero

The project continues the curatorial direction of the garage: a hybrid, essential space designed to showcase works from the Palazzo Bentivoglio collection in a completely different context, one capable of transforming them and generating new questions.

At the core of this intervention lies the notion of displacement: moving the works outside the collection and placing them inside the garage means observing what happens when they are deprived of the network of visual relationships that usually sustains them. If inside the museum the marionettes exist within a precise ecosystem of references and juxtapositions, here they suddenly find themselves alone, compelled to redefine their own way of inhabiting space. As curator Davide Trabucco notes, “nothing is born to stand in solitude: we always think of things in relation to other things.”

Enej Gala, Tri marionete iz seije. Acquaintances, 2020-2021, garage BENTIVOGLIO, Palazzo Bentivoglio ph. Carlo Favero

A new display support was specifically designed to host Gala’s marionettes: an L-shaped metal bar anchored to the wall, functioning both as a structural support and as an ideal bridge to the previous installation dedicated to the netsuke. This bar becomes a kind of conceptual hinge, allowing the work to inhabit the garage without fully adapting to it, maintaining a distance that preserves its identity. It creates a constant tension—almost a silent conflict—between the space the work needs in order to communicate and the space the garage needs to reveal itself as an autonomous aesthetic device.

Two marionettes hang from the bar, like figures suspended in a moment of anticipation, ready to be animated or to tell a story that can be sensed but never fully disclosed. A third appears more discreet: it rests directly on the floor, in a corner of the window. This minimal gesture suggests that even the ground, in a place like this—a small secular sanctuary devoted to looking—can naturally become a pedestal.

While in the collection the Acquaintances inhabit a chapel, protected and far from the street, in the garage they rediscover direct contact with the outside world: they return to their theatrical origin, to the narrative and performative function that is inherent to every marionette. Here they offer themselves without filters to passers-by, gifting a moment of suspension, wonder, or questioning to those who walk down the street.

Enej Gala, Tri marionete iz seije. Acquaintances, 2020-2021, garage BENTIVOGLIO, Palazzo Bentivoglio ph. Carlo Favero

With this intervention, Tri marionete iz serije: Acquaintances, garage BENTIVOGLIO continues its exploration of the relationship between artworks and context, opening up new interpretations of the collection through small yet meaningful shifts. The next appointment, scheduled for Arte Fiera 2026, will be dedicated to Temporali by Alberto Garutti, in the version created for Palazzo Cusani in 2015: a key work in his reflection on the shared responsibility of looking.

garage BENTIVOGLIO

via del Borgo di San Pietro 3A, Bologna

Date

21 novembre – 6 dicembre 2025