There are moments in which art questions not so much what it reveals, but what it conceals. It is in this tension between presence and absence, between the visible and the invisible, that the exhibition project “Blinding Plan: The Minimalism of Art”, curated by Sara Papini and hosted by Fondazione Carlo Gajani as part of Art City Bologna 2025, is rooted.

Debora Vrizzi, “Blinding plan”, 2019, digital photographic image, courtesy of the artist
The exhibition does not limit itself to offering a visual experience, but invites a profound rethinking of our relationship with artistic material and the space that hosts it. Here, absence is not emptiness, but possibility: a mental and emotional place in which the viewer is called to redefine the meaning of observing. The transparent sheets that veil Carlo Gajani’s works act as membranes between what seems to be missing and what emerges, allowing a glimpse of an essential concept: art can exist and speak even through the silence of its physical body. In this context, the work by artists Isabella Tortola and Debora Vrizzi amplifies the sense of erasure as a creative gesture. Tortola, with her photographs of spaces stripped of accessories, and Vrizzi, with her videos that remove artworks from museums leaving visitors to contemplate nothingness, weave a complex and intersectional discourse. Here otherness is not dualism, but coexistence: absence illuminates presence, and vice versa. Sara Papini, with her curatorship, does not simply build an exhibition: she questions the mechanisms of perception. And in this interview she takes us on an exploratory journey of the exhibition, inviting us to confront the transformative power of an art that manifests itself in its concealment.

Isabella Tortola, “Untitled”, 2019, digital photographic image, courtesy of the artist
Antonella Buttazzo: Come è nato il progetto “Blinding Plan: The Minimalism of Art” e cosa ti ha ispirata nel concepirlo? Qual è stato il tuo approccio curatoriale per dare coerenza a un progetto che sfida i canoni tradizionali dell’esposizione artistica?
Sara Papini: “The Blinding Plan” was born around September 2024, while I was visiting the Gajani Foundation, a place that I love very much and that I now know in every detail. In fact, this is the second year that I have been lucky enough to work with Gajani’s house during Art City. Analyzing Carlo Gajani’s artistic production, we know that he worked mainly with painting and photography. My research, on the other hand, focuses especially on video art and on themes such as feminism, ecofeminism and queerness. Therefore, it seemed right to me to not only bring the video element into this exhibition, but also the photographic one. So, I decided to put two great contemporary artists in dialogue: on the one hand, Debora Vrizzi, director and video artist and on the other, Isabella Tortola, photographer. And it was precisely from a meeting with Isabella Tortola that the idea of removal and minimalism was born. These elements are common to both Debora and Isabella, but they come before the artistic practice of the great Carlo Gajani and the space where he worked and lived. After all, the Foundation is nothing other than his home, which has remained frozen since the day of his death. Compared to last year’s exhibition, where Francesca Lolli and I settled in with a treasure hunt, this year I thought that the right medium was removal, to be able to open up and think about different themes, more necessary than ever in the contemporary world. This is how the inspiration for the sheets came, which cover and hide all of Gajani’s works within the exhibition, investigating their removal, and highlighting instead, the works of Isabella and Debora.

Isabella Tortola, “Untitled”, 2019, digital photographic image, courtesy of the artist
What does the gesture of “cancellation” mean to you in an artistic context? Is it a provocation, a reflection, or both?
The gesture of removal, freely inspired by Emilio Isgrò, does not want to be a total cancellation but a real opening to learn how to use and apply a new type of gaze. When we hide, through a see-through, an object inside the room of a house or in any other environment, we are led to ask ourselves what is underneath, underlining the curious prerogative that is part of us, as well as the element of play. Clearly it is also a provocation. In today’s world we have learned to pass by situations with a total lack of emotion and a dramatic cynicism. If the spectator is called, however, to participate in an exhibition, perhaps it is possible to dismantle this wall of detachment. Furthermore, it is also a reflection and a critique of capitalism and the unbridled artistic commodification that we have been experiencing for too many years now.
The spaces of the Gajani Foundation have a very strong identity. Was it complex to find a balance between the artists’ works and the intrinsic meaning of the Foundation’s spaces? How did you work to integrate the project with Carlo Gajani’s legacy?
The Foundation has a very strong identity, very true. If I told you it wasn’t complex, I’d be lying. We are working with Isabella and Debora inside an artist’s house, full of works and beauties. We first entered on tiptoe. Isabella and Debora, however, have a communicative power and a disarming performative knowledge and therefore, everything fell into place in the right space with extreme naturalness. Gajani, should not have been excluded from this process in any way, but integrated as you well said and made a participant in our movements. The two artists, in fact, have established, in the various rooms, a real open dialogue with the owner of the house. But I won’t reveal anything else… You’ll have to come and see us!

Isabella Tortola and Debora Vrizzi, “Blinding Plan: The Minimalism of Art”, installation view at Fondazione Carlo Gajani, Bologna
In an exhibition where art manifests itself through absence, what kind of experience do you hope the public can live?
I hope the public will come away entertained but also stimulated. The hope is to make them and see them active, and not just users of something that is now simply considered “commodity”. The approach is that of performance and therefore to arouse emotions and reactions from the public, whatever they may be. Each visitor will see many things, certainly different from my curatorial line and those are the stories I can’t wait to hear. Art is subjective, depending on who goes through it.
In your opinion, does contemporary art have the task of destabilizing or accompanying the public?
Excellent question! In some cases I believe that the public should be accompanied, but in others, especially if you want to address certain issues such as commodification, capitalism, the environment, feminism and queerness, it should be destabilized. I think of great current compatriot artists who play on this, such as Francesca Lolli, Leoni & Mastrangelo, Chiara Ventura, Claudia Amatruda, Rooy Charlie Lana, Ruben Montini, Agnes Questionmark and many others..
How do you think the theme of artistic erasure can dialogue with the concept of “visual habit” that often characterizes the enjoyment of works?
It dialogues with it by interrupting their relationship. It is necessary for the public to leave its passive logic of user, to return to an active situation and to react in front of art. We cannot get used to looking without feeling anything anymore.
Info:
Isabella Tortola e Debora Vrizzi. Blinding Plan: The Minimalism of Art
curated by Sara Papini
05/02/2025 – 09/02/2025
Fondazione Carlo Gajani
Via de’ Castagnoli 14 – Bologna
www.fondazionecarlogajani.it

After obtaining the high school languages diploma, she continued her studies graduating in Art History at the University of Salento, with a bilingual thesis on the Pre-Raphaelites. Since then, she has been actively contributing as a columnist and collaborator with national blogs and with local magazines and TV programs.
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