Set along Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in Pescara, a boulevard named after the first king of united Italy and emblematic of the country’s post-unification urban identity, this exhibition unfolds within a city shaped by cycles of destruction and reconstruction. Largely rebuilt after World War II, Pescara’s architecture reflects a modern, functional fabric in which vertical expansion and civic standardization replaced much of its historical past. The building, one of the city’s early postwar skyscrapers, stands as a marker of this transition toward a contemporary urban condition.

The works presented here engage directly with this context, drawing connections between construction, image-making, and urban narratives. Central to the exhibition are construction meshes sourced from Rome in anticipation of the Jubilee of 2025, a global religious event that transforms the city through both spiritual and infrastructural renewal.

These printed surfaces simultaneously conceal and advertise renovation, functioning as visual intermediaries for the city itself. Some feature graffiti reflecting political tensions and the current crises faced by the city’s inhabitants. Here they function as fragments of an urban skin: images produced by the city, about the city. This tension between surface and structure continues in the sculptural works, two elevator cabins removed from their shafts. The removal reveals their form and hidden exterior insulation, residue, and wear exposing the material underside of a system typically associated with progress and vertical mobility. Turned inside out and reconfigured as static objects, it suggests a stalled mechanism of ascent. Positioned on the fourth floor of one of Pescara’s few skyscrapers, the work resonates within an Italian urban context in which contemporary architecture rarely exceeds the symbolic height of the church.

Cut Line is a video work capturing a grinder cutting metal creating sparks of light. It is Installed across the western and southern façades of the building on ten holographic LED displays, turning the gallery space inside out towards the street. The work also extends into the gallery’s bathroom and what is normally used as the gallery store room. The imagery oscillates between the industrial and the cinematic, where acts of physical cutting and the editing of video footage merge. The work cuts a continuous line across the surface of the screens and the architecture it’s installed on, activating the building. Visible from the street and operating at night beyond gallery hours, the piece extends the exhibition into the public realm. The spark motif reappears in a series of paintings that capture these fleeting bursts into sustained material compositions. The works position the viewer within an explosive field of light and matter drawing on visual techniques such as perspective and chiaroscuro. A split second is caught perpetually in paint simultaneously cosmic and mechanical.

The exhibition curated by Massimiliano Scuderi, will open on Saturday, May 16, at 6 p.m. and will be open by appointment until August 1, 2026.