Luca Vitone brings to Pescara "For Eternity," a solo exhibition on memory and the sense of smell

Beginning March 7, 2025 through May 30, 2025, the La Rocca Foundation in Pescara will host a solo exhibition by Luca Vitone (Genoa, 1964) entitled Per l’eternità. Premise for a Trilogy, curated by Francesca Guerisoli. A project that returns in a single corpus a cycle of works started in 2013 and that revolves around an unprecedented exploration of collective memory through the sense of smell. The project for eternity, which gives the Pescara exhibition its title, originated in 2013 for the Italian Pavilion of the 55th Venice Biennale, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi. On that occasion, Vitone had created an olfactory sculpture in collaboration with perfumer Maria Candida Gentile.

The Pescara exhibition brings together for the first time the entire cycle for eternity, placing it in a trilogy that also includes 2014’s Imperium and 2017’s A tale of forked tongues. Three works that reflect on the relationship between power and memory through the use of the sense of smell. If For Eternity refers to economic power and the tragedy of asbestos, Imperium addresses the concept of the state and A Tale of forked tongues focuses on military authority. The heart of the installation is the olfactory sculpture for eternity (eternit), which will imbue a room of the La Rocca Foundation with its rhubarb fragrance. The reference is to Casale Monferrato, a place symbolic of the fight against asbestos, where for years Eternit dust claimed thousands of lives.

"For Eternity (Pescara) is a photographic triptych composed of a collage with rhubarb plants filling the space of the foundation,“ Vitone declares. ”The visualization of what happens with the smell of eternity composed of rhubarb fragrances that invades the space creating a huge but invisible sculpture."

The exhibition will also include the video for eternity, shot in 2013 in Casale Monferrato itself, documenting the reality of a community marked by contamination. Alongside this, photographic collages will find space, including an unpublished triptych made for the La Rocca Foundation. Also enriching the exhibition will be Stanze (Fondazione La Rocca), an unpublished work that reflects on dust as a symbolic element of human existence. The artist has collected the dust deposited in the spaces of the foundation, transforming it into a visual trace of its presence and absence. “A portrait of the exhibition space executed with dust coming directly from the place itself, that which is deposited daily on the various surfaces and which when removed is immediately replaced by other similar ones. A metaphorical element of our living and the spaces we inhabit,” the artist argues.

With this solo exhibition, Luca Vitone returns to question the public about the tragedy of asbestos. Twelve years after his first exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the artist reintroduces his olfactory sculpture as a reminder that the judicial process on the Eternit case is still ongoing and that the number of victims continues to grow. The intense fragrance of rhubarb thus becomes the vehicle of a collective memory that cannot be erased, a sensory reminder that transforms art into a tool of denunciation. Parallel to the exhibition, Fondazione La Rocca will organize a public program with meetings and insights, involving the artist, curator Francesca Guerisoli and other guests.

Luca Vitone, born in Genoa in 1964 and active between Milan and Berlin, is among the most important contemporary Italian artists. His research moves between sculpture, installation, photography and video, with a particular attention to the context in which the works take shape. Throughout his career he has exhibited in prestigious institutions such as MAXXI in Rome, Villa Adriana in Tivoli in 2021, the Museo Novecento in Florence, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, and the Weserburg Museum in Bremen in 2020. Among the awards he has received are the 2002 Dena Foundation Award and the Italian Council call for proposals announced by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Mibact, which he won in 2018 with the Romanistan project.

Luca Vitone brings to Pescara "For Eternity," a solo exhibition on memory and the sense of smell

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