Manipulating, camuflage and altering a page, a book or an entire encyclopedia. Stefano Arienti (b. 1961, Asola) has been archiving and preserving books and volumes for years, on which he intervenes through ironic falsifications and reworkings. He erases and folds, concealing reality and implementing a rigorous operating mode that draws on the typical processuality from the Seventies, in which the action of (de)construction of an object and its materiality influence its outcome. Cuts, curvatures of the paper, minimal bends or formal achievements generate unexpected architectures. The manipulated books are the result of this process of trial and error and sequences, which are repeated in gestures that are replicated but never identical, as they are the result of manual skill and the intentions of the material.
Stefano Arienti, “Herbaceous Crops”, installation view at Palazzo Marchi, Parma, 2025, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of Palazzo Marchi
“Coltivazione erbacee” (Herbaceous Cultivation) is a work from the late 1980s, the result of the tampering with an old university text with the same title, whose pages are folded, stapled and blocked between the front and back sides of the book. But it is also the title of the exhibition designed for the elegant Palazzo Marchi in Parma, a private building open to the public through a programme of visits organised by the ArcheoVea association, which until 14 December 2025 will host Arienti’s project. Curated by Elena Bray, it is accompanied by a publication with a critical essay by the curator and drawings by the artist, produced in collaboration with Via Industriae Publishing. Arienti observes the world by recovering a part of its “material culture” (books) and reinvents it, re-proposing it within a path in which the object loses its original nature to follow new aesthetic and meaningful configurations. The book-object is part of an artistic historical narrative that draws on the avant-garde and has transformed over time, assuming a condition of complete autonomy. The artist, uses distortion to manipulate books, experimenting with the characteristics of the material, its fragility and the resistance of paper to folding, tearing and perforation. The paper sculptures are the result of deliberate sophistication that leads to unexpected outcomes.
Stefano Arienti, “Herbaceous Crops”, installation view at Palazzo Marchi, Parma, 2025, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of Palazzo Marchi
In the Chinese room with walls frescoed with palm trees and other trees, “Systematic identification of organic components” (1988) unfolds like a seismic wave, spreading across the mosaic parquet floor with square slats, creating an anthropomorphic form that seems to colonise the space. In “Turbine”, the paper folds in on itself to create shapes recognisable in the artist’s iconography, which dates back to the late 1980s. Through the act of folding, Arienti creates sculptures that evoke an industrial imagery, but which are presented in their lightness of execution, blending perfectly with their surroundings.
Stefano Arienti, “Erased Books”, installation view at Palazzo Marchi, Parma, 2025, photo by Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio, courtesy of Palazzo Marchi
When he is not folding, Arienti removes images and texts from objects using collage and erasure techniques. Whether it’s wall painting in “Painted telephone directory”, from the 80s, erasures with the eraser that remove texts from books, as in pop-up books or those printed on glossy paper in “7 Animal Books” and “Hide and seek”, from the early 90s, or even omissions in the encyclopedia of “Natura natura natura” (2009), in which he applies dust jackets from the same series, with the same name as the title, to volumes of the same format but relating to other topics. The counterfeiting is real in images, often ironic, erotic and horror, in books with artwork on their covers, and in the twelve monographs dedicated to artists, including Enzo Cucchi, in which he replaces works with cats, or the floral compositions instead of the works by Giulio Paolini. It is an arbitrary interpolations that invite the visitors to compare themselves with the objects in an attempt to recognize the deception.
Stefano Arienti, “Chemical composition of the Elements”, installation view at Palazzo Marchi, Parma, 2025, photo by Domenico Buttafoco, courtesy of Palazzo Marchi
The installation “Enciclopedia” (Encyclopaedia) (2025), which occupies the rooms of the ballroom on the main floor, consists of volumes scattered on white chairs and on the floor, together with clouds of carded wool. The volumes become places in which to seek interference carried out with the spolvero technique, typical of wall decoration and recovery of frescoes. In the whiteness of the space, with walls stuccoed by Giocondo Albertolli with French-style foliage, Arienti creates an intimate and poetic dimension, with natural light passing through the windows, creating the perception of a timeless place. More or less evident camouflage, sophisticated falsifications and distortions, but also cuts that Arienti makes by cutting with the same cut used to make them, as in the novels, essays and scientific texts of “Libri tranciati”, (2006); with portrait photos on the cover “Albert” (2006), or resized in format as in “Nomi al taglio” (2007-2008) by cutting the white border, dedicated to biographies of personalities who have experienced trauma or violent deaths.
Stefano Arienti, “Albert”, Palazzo Marchi, installation view at Palazzo Marchi, Parma, 2025, photo by Domenico Buttafoco, courtesy of Palazzo Marchi
Cuts, engravings and perforations are part of the artist’s language as in “Studio per targa Anche-In/Arch 2006” from 2007, or in the new site-specific work for the palace courtyard of the palace, “Orto di libri”, in which he also engraved the bamboo trees, which together with the seeds of the plants and the trunks (the latter recovered from Anna Marchi’s garden), they form the backdrop to the wooden and plastic boxes containing the perforated books. Arienti’s works are also alive when it comes to books. They are born from an act of care and attention in an attempt to recover objects, stories and memories subject to temporality and a condition of induced and natural change. Forms that surrender to become something else, between the involuntariness of matter and the artistic gesture.
Elena Solito
Info:
Stefano Arienti. Coltivazioni erbacee (Herbaceous Cultivation)
curated by Elena Bray
19/10/2025 – 14/12/ 2025
Palazzo Marchi
Strada della Repubblica, 57 Parma
www.palazzomarchi.it
Writer and author of critical texts. She writes stories about people and “non-places” of art. In particular, she is interested in investigating the aesthetic experience as an anthropological fact, capable of dilating its physical and conceptual space, activating unexpected dialogues and evading more traditional spaces. Writing acquires an autonomous dimension, becoming material for observation and reflection around possible (and non-unique) narratives of contemporaneity. He was a member of the editorial staff of FormeUniche, she writes for Made in mind, ARTUU. Founder of rivière, an observatory for critical reflection.
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