On the roof of Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin there is a garden that looks down on the city from above; not from the geometric and orderly perspective of the urban grid, but from the perspective of its rooftops. Climbing to the top of the Lingotto, there is a moment when one naturally wonders whether one is entering a museum or a deceased industrial dream now interrupted halfway through. The carmaker’s historic test track, right where the cars were tested, is home to Pinacoteca Agnelli, which hosts both temporary exhibitions and artistic installations and site-specific interventions, moved by the hope and intention to leave a trace. But what does the redevelopment of a private factory – a symbol of a city and the Italian industrial-productive movement – into a contemporary cultural space mean?
Pista 500, installation view, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, courtesy Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino, ph. Credit Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Art in today’s context conveys not only aesthetic canons but is also a tool for legitimizing and refunctionalizing, capable of suggesting and insinuating criticism. The new installations at Pinacoteca Agnelli’s Pista 500 drag in this direction: they are points of light that erupt from concrete, but also gestures of a larger project that invests in art as a form of urban reclamation. New site-specific installations by the duo Jennifer Allora (Philadelphia, 1974) & Guillermo Calzadilla (Havana, 1971), Rong Bao (Beijing, 1997), Francesco Gennari (Fano, 1973) and Silvia Rosi (Scandiano, 1992) have recently been inaugurated. The new works are divided following two main visual strands, namely the floral imagery and the self-portrait; in this way political discourses intertwine with philosophical discourses originating narratives that extend beyond the circuit and the place itself.
Allora & Calzadilla, “Graft (Phantom Tree)”, 2025, installation view, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, 2025, Courtesy Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino, courtesy Pinacoteca Agnelli
Allora & Calzadilla‘s installation, Graft (Phantom Tree) (2025), connects with a natural imagery and is composed of about 50,000 recycled plastic flowers that form a floating tree with no trunk, roots or branches. The synthetic flowers are inspired by those of a specific type of oak, the roble amarillo, native to the Caribbean. This phantom nature blooms in the heart of the ramp as a break in industrial architecture and delicately and unusually describes the post-colonial condition. Through the installation, the artists recount the impoverishment and alterations of land due to colonial exploitation, condensing historical and geopolitical issues.
Allora & Calzadilla, “Graft (Phantom Tree)” 2025; Francesco Gennari, “Avevo anche 7 stelle in tasca…”, 2025, courtesy Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino, ph. Credit Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Also located in the ramp, we find Francesco Gennari‘s work, Avevo anche 7 stelle in tasca… (2025), the bronze cast of his own coat set up as if it were resting on the concrete balustrade. A forgotten part of himself, left there as a testimony of his passage, of his presence; a minimalist and emotional self-portrait offered by means of a typical element of his daily life, namely the loden (a recurring element in the artist’s practice) that leads to an inner reflection. A gesture as simple as it is powerful to tell about the self and his personal identity as an artist and dreamer. In contrast to the cold image of concrete and the industrial context, Francesco Gennari pauses to reflect on the warmth of human essence and, indirectly, also the role of art in the contemporary context.
Rong Bao, “Carnivorous Bloom”, installation view, 2025, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, 2025, courtesy Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino, ph. Credit Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Rong Bao has produced a hybrid, mobile organism, Carnivorous Bloom (2025), which as the title suggests takes the form of a carnivorous vegetable composed of silicone. The work is interactive and ironically questions the exchange between work and viewer at the moment when distance is cancelled. Through post-human imagery with a pop aesthetic, the artist investigates the dialogue between architecture/artificial space and garden/organic space and the role of the body in straddling the two environments.
Silvia Rosi, “Omissions”, 2025, installation view, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, 2025, courtesy Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino, ph. Credit Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Finally, Silvia Rosi‘s work investigates through photography such themes as: personal and collective identity and memory, representations and consequences of colonial processes. Omissions (2025) is installed on a billboard evoking a visual advertising prototype that reasons about the theme of the collective self-portrait and power dynamics. The artist takes up and mixes traditional Togolese family portrait codes, which have allowed the free affirmation of counter-representations. In addition, she incorporates in her images elements related to a board game – the Ludo – that originated in India but was exported throughout the British colonies thus visually linking the dynamics of the game to those of power.
Info:
Pinacoteca Agnelli, PISTA 500
curated by Sarah Cosulich and Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti
since 16/04/2025
Pinacoteca Agnelli Torino
Lingotto, Via Fenoglietti 15, 10126, Torino
www.pinacoteca-agnelli.it
Irene Follador (Venice, 1997) is an emerging critic and curator. She graduated first in Art History at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and then she obtained a master’s degree at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. She has been collaborating with Juliet Art Magazine for a long time and, at the same time, she carries out her independent curatorial practice; her research and interest mainly tends towards works of moving images and new Media within the contemporary art system.
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