This year, the theme of the contemporary art exhibition Mutazioni (Mutations) was "The Signs".
Mutazioni is an annual art event in our town, Schio (VI) in the north-east of Italy. It is usually organised around the end of autumn and the beginning of winter.
Since this year's theme was a bit abstract, the exhibits were very different. A distinguishing feature of this years' exhibition was a series of exhibits from different countries of Africa from the personal collection of artist and art-collector Bruno Sandonà.
As always, there was a lot to see and admire in the exhibition. In this post, I want to present some of my favourite art-works from the Mutazioni 2025.
The picture on the left is from an installation created by a group of artists from a cooperative working with marginalised persons and disabled persons called Coop Libra that I had liked very much.
A few exhibits seemed familiar to me, they were similar to those presented in earlier editions of Mutazioni exhibitions. So I have excluded them from this list.
Let me start with a hand-painted dress. You can click on the images for a bigger view.
Hand-Painted Silk by Daria Tasca and Annamaria Iodice
Daria Tasca from Treviso is known for her art combined with woven materials. This time, she was joined by Annamaria Iodice, a sculptor, painter, designer and performer from Naples.
The two artists took a piece of silk woven in early 1950s, hand-painted it and created a two-piece dress out of it, wrapped around a framework of iron, copper and aluminium. It was inspired by the digital prints of an art-work called "The Earthquake" by Slavia Janeslieva and Teona Milieva.
Last year, in the Mutazioni 2024 exhibition, Daria had joined with a ceramic artist Vania Sartori to create a somewhat similar artwork focusing on ceramics, while this year the focus was on painting. I think that works like this are important to remind ourselves that art may not only be in the exhibits but even be worn by persons.
Ceramic Dresses of Lorenzo Gnesotto
Lorenzo is from Bassano del Grappa. His artworks included 3 quirky ceramic "dresses" made from Terracotta bound by elastic fibres. Through the use of different kinds of clays for making the terracotta pieces, it gave them different colours and designs.
More than dresses, they seemed like body-decorations. They also remind me of the metal nets and armours used by medieval soldiers to protect their bodies.
Origami Sculptures and Sound-Installations by Silvia Tedesco
This artwork was by Silvia from Vicenza and it included three round bases on which origami sculptures covered with resins were placed. At the same time, each sculpture was associated with a specific soundscape. In fact, she describes her art as "Talking Artwork".
One of the sculptures, called "the Soul Dance" had dragonfly-shaped origami, another called "Dream and Bubble Soap" had soap bubbles and the third one called "Carpe-Diem" had the Japanese Kohako-Koi fishes. Click on the image for a bigger view.
Monotype Incision Prints by Manuela Simoncelli
Manuela was born in Australia and has her workshop in Mussolente (VI). For the past few years, she has been experimenting with incisions. Apart from her work as an artist, she is also a Jazz singer.
She had three monotype prints in the exhibition, they were titled Rhythm 1-2-3. One had the silhouette of a woman reading a book, second with a girl and third, a woman with a mobile phone. She first makes the incisions using soft-wax and dry-point and then uses toner transfer for creating unique monotypes.
Abstract Art by Stefania Righi
Stefania is from Vicenza and she had three paintings in the exhibition. Her art tends towards abstract, using mixed material techniques by using materials like stucco and cementite along the oil and acrylic colours to create textured art-works.
I loved her art. For example, the painted shown above, felt like looking at a Zen garden with its soft colours, and hidden forms and shapes that seemed to come out of and disappear in the fog.
Art Works by Bruno Sandonà
Bruno Sandonà from Pastina is both an artist as well as, an art-collector. In the Mutations 2025 exhibition, there were 3 of his artworks. It also had a whole section dedicated to his collection of the art-objects from Africa.
From his art works, I have chosen one of his paintings for this post (left). It had a raw energy and seemed to be inspired by his collection of African art.
I also liked his ceramic-leg sculpture in the exhibition.
There was a big collection of art objects from different parts of Africa, especially from the countries of West Africa.
About his art-works collection from Africa, in the images below you can see a sculpture that has a kind of ritual container placed on the legs of the two persons. It is from the Dogon people in Mali.
Abstract Paintings by Davide Piazza
Davide Piazza is the president since 2003 of the well-known art-circle La Soffitta located in Vicenza. Apart from being a well-known artist, he is known as a teacher, as he conducts courses of oil painting.
In the exhibition, there were three of his artworks, all three were in shades of blue and yellow. They reminded me of lakes and sand-dunes, with undefined borders, and seemed to transmit serenity and joy.
Hyper-Realism of Giovanni Meneguzzo
Giovanni Meneguzzo, who presented 3 paintings in this exhibition is originally from Malo and now lives in Olmi di Treviso. Malo had 2 other artists from the Meneguzzo family (Giobatta and Corrado) but I am not sure if Giovanni is related to them.
His three paintings in the exhibition, were in hyper-realism style. One had the autumn leaves, another had a discarded cardboard box used for a gift and the third had left over stuff along with with an old demijohn wine-bottle. I liked all three of them.
Giovanni started as a teacher in an art school. His passion has been to collect left-over stuff such as old leaves, clay, bottles, etc. and create his artworks based on them or by using them in his art.
Absence-Essence Installation by Francesco Risola
The artist seemed to focus his art to share his emotions about thoughtless and meaningless destruction of the nature.
I liked this installation and its idea of projecting the moving shadows of a tree on the tree-stump & cracked dry earth. I felt that it expressed very well the impermanence of life.
Sara Zilio's Flowing Matter
Sara Zilio is an artist from Schio. She had only one artwork in the exhibition, an acrylic painting that seemed like different colours flowing on a liquid surface, sometimes blurring and sometimes separate, tending towards each other like the extended fingers of man touching the divine in Michaelangelo's fresco in the Sistine chapel.
A friend who was visiting the exhibition with me, didn't like it, he said that it reminded him of snakes. So as you can see, choosing favourite artworks is very subjective and his choice of favourites would have been very different from mine.
Flavio Pelligrini's Abstract Art
Pellegrini's work in the exhibition was one of the most unusual one for me in this exhibition. Pelligrini likes to work with wood, but not by creating usual wood sculptures. Instead, he uses his passion for information technology (IT) to create very unusual abstract art with the wood.
For example, you can click on it and enlarge the above image of Pellegrini's work to look at how he has created it by mixing together wood and IT. I felt that looking at it can be a transcendental experience, guiding our minds towards a meditation on infinity.
To Conclude: Metamorphosis by Coop Libra
Let me conclude this post with another installation, which I liked very much.
It was a group work made by different persons from a cooperative based in Romano d'Ezzelino that works with marginalised and disabled persons. They had created it under the guidance of art-therapist Valentina Grotto.
The installation had a mannequin in the centre, who represented the Butterfly-Goddess that is transforming from the Pupa to the Butterfly, and was covered by plastic bags. The central figure was surrounded by a spiral made from individual art-works on paper and clothes.
Apart from the idea underlying this installation, I felt that visually it created a stunning impact.
If you liked looking at my favourite works from this years Mutazioni exhibition, perhaps you would like to check similar posts about previous editions of Mutazioni - 2021-22 edition and the 2024 edition
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