You can experience art in a contemplative and meditative attitude, or one can make fruition itself a practice. This second possibility guides the collecting of Gemma De Angelis Testa, who has made her work of artistic acquisition an emotional and intellectual ploy to revive the dialogue with her husband Armando Testa, her guide in the discovery of the art-ecosystem. This discovery seems to have been interrupted by the death of the Turinese designer, but Gemma soon realises that the absence of her companion has not left a sterile void, but on the contrary has opened up a glimmer from which to look at the world of art, now home to both of them, with a gaze full of new promise. The eyes of the future collector promise to be captivated by the artists whose voices stand out, and then capture her in turn in the act of gathering together the works that “make the most noise”. The woman, however, goes one step further by making her collector’s gaze the vehicle of a collective gaze, devoting her acquisitions to the education of the social gaze.
Villa Panza, “Un altro sguardo”, © Villa Panza. Foto di Lorenzo Pennati, 2025 © FAI
Another Look is, not by chance, the title of the exhibition that Villa Panza has decided to dedicate to a selection of works acquired by Testa. The selected masterpieces unfold along the walls of the villa, showing how Gemma Testa’s sense of beauty has been shaped over the years, until the path stumbles into yet another gaze, that of the collector Giuseppe Panza di Biumo to whom the series of permanent works is owed. At times, the comparison between the two creates a short circuit, dictated primarily by the dissonance between the calm silence evoked by Panza’s abstract, almost perfect works and the noise of the collector’s canvases, photographs and installations charged with meaning. The works chosen for the exhibition, in fact, make noise even when they would seem to emanate a sense of calm, as in the case of Anselm Reyle’s painting (Untitled, 2003), in which the apparent monochrome of black is broken by the thunderous eruption of pinkish tones from the background of the canvas. Or the video art of Bill Viola (Surrender, 2001), which breaks the poeticity of the slow shot with a profound restlessness, recalling the drama of the myth of Narcissus and the incommunicability between ego and alter(ego) – the reflected self. The noise increases when we reach the room dedicated to the performativity of female identity, subject to admiration as in the series of Francesco Vezzoli’s elegant, timeless portraits (Embroidery of a Book: Young at Any Age, 2000), or frustration as in Vanessa Beecroft’s performance (VB 21.016. Ali, 1996), which immortalises in one shot the disharmonious and contradictory values to which fashion forces the female body.
Villa Panza, “Un altro sguardo”, © Villa Panza. Foto di Lorenzo Pennati, 2025 © FAI
The noise becomes a roar in the room that contains the performance in which Marina Abramović carves into her own flesh the five-pointed star that has become a symbol of the Russian Revolution (Lips of Thomas, 1975-1997), Shirin Neshat’s portrait of the political-religious martyrdom of Iranian women (I Am Its Secret) and the insane social claustrophobia evoked by Andres Serrano’s portrait of a Klanswoman (Grand Kaliff II, 1990). The noise is then channelled into the representation of political protests, such as Armando Testa’s manifesto against the abrogation of divorce or Monica Bonvicini’s hyper-realistic belt, which shout a hymn to freedom. The inclusion of some works by Gemma’s beloved and mentor enriches the exhibition not only for their incisiveness, but first and foremost because it shows how it is the most intimate dimension of the individual that dictates the construction of his or her aesthetic sense and not adherence to objective criteria of taste. It is in experience, therefore, that aesthetic sensibility takes shape and it is in the experience of sharing – such as Testa’s active collecting – that that sensibility can help shape the aesthetic canon.
Villa Panza, “Un altro sguardo”, © Villa Panza. Foto di Lorenzo Pennati, 2025 © FAI
The canon is what decrees what is of value and what is considered as such has an inevitable impact on the gaze of the community, which is thus educated to recognise the noises and silences of beauty. The eyes of society, having become attentive to reading the coordinates of the arts, can eventually convert that attention to beauty into what it conveys: appeals to morality, political conscience or the simple but never banal human sensibility. These suggestions are realised in Adrian Paci’s videos which, driven by themes such as migration and the reconquest of identity, close the exhibition. The visitor, therefore, along the rooms of the villa in Varese learns ‘the canon’ – from Robert Rauschenberg to Cy Twombly, Cecily Brown, Ai Weiwei, Joseph Kosuth – and in this journey has the privilege of making his/her own the point of view with which Gemma Testa and Giuseppe Panza have given form – a unique and sometimes indecipherable form – to their cultural heritage.
Info:
Un altro sguardo (Another Look). Works from the Gemma De Angelis Testa Collection
11.04.25 – 12.10.25
Villa Panza – Piazza Litta, 1, Varese
fondoambiente.it
Graduate in Philosophy from the University of Milan, where she currently lives, she specialized in aesthetics and contemporary criticism. Passionate of the art world and devoted to research, she believes in the potential of the interdisciplinary gaze, which intertwines critical thinking, typical of philosophical backgroud, and the communicative power of art to shape the evolving identity of its time.
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