The exhibition “In gioco” by the Abruzzo-based art collective Di Bernardo Rietti Toppeta is currently underway at the zerozerosullivellodelmare exhibition space in Pescara, directed by Lúcio Rosato. The exhibition explores the evolution of play over time and play as a fertile ground in which individuals’ intellectual potential can evolve, especially by reconnecting with nature and establishing social and human connections, not just virtual ones. The project began as a reflection on how the emergence of new technologies and the development of video games have impacted, especially on younger generations, their perception of reality. This has changed their way of experiencing and experiencing everyday life, often interchanged with high-resolution screens and images that alter, or rather, “hypersensitize,” to the point of altering their relationship with the world and with others, inducing an increasingly blurred “vision” devoid of classifiable boundaries.

By Bernardo Rietti Toppeta, “Futuri ricordi”, mixed media on cardboard, wood, mirror, acrylic and glass marbles, polyptych in 4 pieces of 50x50x20 cm, 2025, photo credits Francesco Di Bernardo, courtesy zerozerosullivellodelmare, Pescara

Underneath an aura of varying alienation, the exhibition is a reflection on the importance of authentic children’s play from a bygone era, while also testifying to a transformation that has occurred and is still ongoing. It focuses specifically on the game of marbles, increasingly less popular today, and pays particular attention to its creative process, its conceptual and playful qualities, also narrated through the works and their manual construction. The artists explain the exhibition by stating: «The “In gioco” project, in a subtle way, would like to turn off the screens, break down the pixels, eliminate the filters, give life to a real blackout useful for reflections on video game addiction, on the negative consequences for health, on the role of culture vs. the impact of the trends dictated by contemporary society […]».

By Bernardo Rietti Toppeta, “Pixeling”, mixed media on cardboard, polyptych in 10 pieces of 50×50 cm, 2025, photo credits Francesco Di Bernardo, courtesy zerozerosullivellodelmare, Pescara

This is how we enter a thinking, idea-pulsing space through the medium of play, with works that speak not so much of how places have changed, but of how our way of inhabiting and observing them has changed. A vast white container full of light gathers the world of yesterday through references to the natural landscape: the clear sky of the work “Io gioco”, the rain of colored marbles in the video “La pioggia”, the roundness of the iridescent glass balls in the work “Pixel” evoking the circular form as a symbol of Nature, and the world of today with the PlayStation buttons of the work “Joy” or the pixelated and blurred images of the polyptych “Pixeling”, in which contemporary human beings become lost and wander alone in search of a reconfiguration of reality. What emerges is a contact between past and present through the real or evoked images of the collective’s works. A visual, transitory, and poetic overstepping of contemporaneity, made all the more evident by the two square mirrors of the work “Futuri ricordi”, which reflect a thin thread of sky, called “segno di cielo” and conceived by Lucio Rosato: a thread of blue wool that crosses the exhibition space as a site-specific intervention.

By Bernardo Rietti Toppeta, “Joy”, wood, glass, acrylic and glass marbles, polyptych in 4 pieces of 70x70x20 cm, 2025, photo credits Francesco Di Bernardo, courtesy zerozerosullivellodelmare, Pescara

It is a possible nod toward an image of a future reality, as well as a delicate glance between landscape and memory, toward the recollection of living in contact with Nature and playing within it, building from one’s own origins and one’s own irreplaceable way of feeling and reasoning. The thread reflected in the mirrors is a kind of timeline, representing a threshold or a passage between two times. In certain works, such as “Joy”, the theme of “visual blurring” and the loss of temporal boundaries to narrate the present is very evident: the four Joystick symbols made in white plywood are reflected on four solid white wooden squares, becoming small marbles gathered in glass, as if pointing to two different ways of conceiving entertainment — not one excluding the other, but with a wide generational leap between them. Through their works, the artists of the collective revive themes such as manual skill, inventiveness, human contact, and reconnection with the environment beyond technology, in pursuit of a renewed wellbeing, arriving at a certain point at speaking of geniality — understood, in the sense of this exhibition, as the opportunity to design and build starting from a marble. In their own words: «How important is play for children? In a society of false wellbeing, a large part of them spend their free time alone and shut in their rooms in the company of hi-tech products, bypassing afternoons spent outside the home among streets and courtyards».

By Bernardo Rietti Toppeta, “Circuito slm00”, MDF, acrylic and glass marbles, 375x150x125x150 cm, 2026, photo credits Francesco Di Bernardo, courtesy zerozerosullivellodelmare, Pescara

The artists of Bernardo Rietti Toppeta’s collective in zerozerosullivellodelmare recreate a spacious playroom, full of memories of distant outdoor childhood play activities (the marble game on the beach, with courses drawn by the bodies of children dragging themselves along the shoreline) and a gaze turned toward video games and their improper use that generates isolation, with the hope of a more conscious use of time, including through the development of new activities that generate human — and not only digital — relationships. The works on display, one of which is interactive, suggest a path to follow oriented toward creative development. As with “Circuito s.l.m.00”, conceived for the exhibition space and for this show, where a track in white MDF wood with mismatched marbles on top stands out against the wall, interrupts, and continues into the zerozerosullivellodelmare workshop space, forming in plan a hypothetical broken zero, recalling the name of the place. The exhibition “In gioco” is not a nostalgic vision of a time gone by, but an attempt to hold together multiple visual and conceptual stimuli, starting from the active and indispensable presence of the human being, still in play.

Chiara Di Carlo

Info:

Di Bernardo Rietti Toppeta. In gioco
con un segno di cielo by Lúcio Rosato
14/02/2026 – 14/03/2026
s.l.m.00
Via dei Marrucini, 19/23 – Pescara
www.instagram.com/zerozerosullivellodelmare/

Juliet Art Magazine

is a contemporary art magazine since 1980