Flavio Favelli presents his new installation Nuova Mixage Up at the Federico Zeri Foundation

On the occasion of ART CITY Bologna 2025, the Fondazione Federico Zeri is hosting a new large-scale installation by Flavio Favelli (Florence, 1967) entitled Nuova Mixage Up. The project, curated by Roberto Pinto, was designed specifically for the reading room of the Zeri Library, a historic environment with a strong cultural and artistic value. The library, located in the former dormitory of the novices of the Renaissance convent of Santa Cristina, home of the Zeri Foundation and the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna, is transformed for the occasion into a stage that welcomes contemporary art in dialogue with its past. The work is part of the rich program of ART CITY Bologna, an initiative that accompanies the famous Arte Fiera, and is sponsored by the University of Bologna and supported by Hera.

The exhibition will open on January 15, 2025 at 5 p.m. and will be open free of charge from January 16 to March 28. The installation will also be open with special hours during ART CITY Bologna (Feb. 7 to 9, 2025), the week dedicated to events and exhibitions promoted by the City of Bologna. The presence of Nuova Mixage Up in this context is an added value not only because of the importance of the artist, but also because of the possibility to access an unprecedented space, full of charm and historical significance.

Installation.

Flavio Favelli, one of the most important Italian artists of his generation, with a career that has been exploring themes of memory and recovery for years, presents a large installation consisting of a series of wooden shelves containing 216 liquor bottles of different shapes and sizes. Objects that the artist has collected over the years and now become part of a new narrative, giving them new meaning. The work reflects Favelli’s poetics, centered on the use of salvaged objects, which through a process of reassembly and renewal, acquire a new life and symbolic value.

The shelves, with no bottom, will be placed above the bookcase furniture in the center of the room, creating a kind of immense visual diaphragm. Favelli’s installation will create a great play of shapes and colors that will blend with the books arranged on the walls, creating a unique vision that combines past and present, tradition and innovation.

“The installation for the Zeri Library,” Flavio Favelli explains, “consists of the display of a series of bottles that I have been collecting for many years. They are bottles of Italian spirits from which I have removed the labels. Historic bottles that have had great fortune since the postwar period. Grappas, bitters, liqueurs, vermouths, aperitifs, distillates; every region of Italy had a great tradition with firms that were ingenious in communicating their product with novel, new and seductive forms that entered the collective imagination. This installation questions the form and aesthetics of the bottle, always in the background compared to the label. The operation also seeks to relate two emblematic objects, books and bottles, which have marked our time and that of art for centuries.”

“It seemed to us an interesting and stimulating opportunity to host in our library a contemporary work that ideally dialogues with the books of Zeri, who by the way during his long career as a scholar had contacts with many artists,” stresses Andrea Bacchi, director of the Federico Zeri Foundation. “It also gives me particular pleasure to be involved in this project, which we would like to continue for the next editions of Art City by hosting new artists at the Zeri Foundation.”

During the week of ART CITY Bologna, a special evening dedicated to the work Nuova Mixage Up will be held on February 7, 2025, featuring Flavio Favelli in dialogue with the public and contemporary art experts. This occasion will be complemented by a meeting on Feb. 13, 2025, at 5:30 p.m., where the artist will converse with Professor Roberto Pinto in a “Talk with the Artist,” delving into the concept behind his work and its relationship with space and memory.

The project is accompanied by the publication of a catalog published by bruno, Venice, edited by Andrea Bacchi and Roberto Pinto, professors of the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna. In addition, a further in-depth study of the work will be made possible through the creation of a web platform, usable thanks to the collaboration with VAR DIGITAL ART by Var Group, which will allow the visitor to explore the collection of bottles photographed in detail.

Who is Flavio Favelli

Flavio Favelli, born in Florence in 1967 and a graduate in Oriental History from the University of Bologna, has a long career behind him, studded with important exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. His best-known projects include exhibitions at the Pecci Center for Art in Prato, Fondation Antoine de Galbert in Paris, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, MAXXI in Rome and MAMbo in Bologna. Favelli has participated in numerous international events, including two editions of the Venice Biennale, and has created permanent works in public spaces such as the Sala d’Attesa in the Pantheon in Bologna. His work is distinguished by the use of salvaged materials and period furniture, which allow him to create environments that challenge the separation between content and container, highlighting the relationship between objects and meanings.

With the presentation of Nuova Mixage Up at the Federico Zeri Foundation, Favelli confirms his commitment to investigating the evocative potential of objects and transforming historic spaces into places of reflection and encounter between the past and the contemporary. The work, accessible to the public until March 28, 2025, represents an important opportunity to explore the work of one of the most interesting contemporary Italian artists, and an opportunity for the public of ART CITY Bologna and Arte Fiera.

Flavio Favelli presents his new installation Nuova Mixage Up at the Federico Zeri Foundation

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