The most extensive and complete exhibition ever dedicated to the oeuvre of Marcello Maloberti: a declaration of love to Milan, which has been the artist’s faithful companion in the creation of his art practice since the beginning of his career.
“METAL PANIC” is promoted by the Municipality of Milan—Culture Directorate and produced by PAC and Silvana Editoriale.
Curated by Diego Sileo, “METAL PANIC” is conceived as an artist’s book that collects and intertwines all the founding themes of Maloberti’s oeuvre, such as: the elevation of the written word into the form of poetry, the sacredness of everyday life and attention to the transformations of the urban landscape. All that through a core of artworks from the 1990s, more recent and unpublished works. The idea of “work in progress” permeates the entire exhibition, which takes shape by using construction site equipment to create the artworks. Many of the works on display have, in fact, been reimagined and tailored for the spaces of the PAC, as if they were behind the scenes elements that materialize among the exhibition audience, stirring up in them the sensation of “being in between things.”
The artist invites viewers to abandon their visual preconceptions already outside the PAC, where CIELO (2024) stands out: the mechanical arm of a truck typically used for building maintenance holds a white neon word written in the artist’s handwriting, placed 20 meters high. Inspired by one of his great mentors, Piero Manzoni, the artist reverses the observer’s point of view by creating a monument/ anti-monument, an infinite column, and an upward escape.
Maloberti envisions the entire exhibition as a contemporary construction site in continuous transformation, where everything seems suspended and potentially possible, and modifies the physical space by altering the aesthetics of the building with the site-specific installation ULTIMATUM (2024) which partially covers the façade with galvanised steel elements.
In the construction of the exhibition, the title cards represent a key element, formed by two galvanised steel plates engraved simulating the artist’s handwriting. Placed at eye level, they do not simply provide information to the viewer, but rather stand out like a horizon line alternating between solid and void space, reminiscing the lines of a notebook. Maloberti also sees the title cards as a new work, INCIPIT (2024), in which each title represents the start of an unwritten book.
The act of turning things upside-down, a common thread in the artist’s poetics, characterizes the work M (2024) in which the gesture in itself takes on a specific political significance. The title M references Mussolini, for the sign’s inverted position evokes how the dictator’s body was hung upside down in Piazzale Loreto on 29th April, 1945. The road sign announcing the entrance to the city of Milan symbolically acts as an upside-down threshold that becomes, therefore, inaccessible to the public.
An unusual frieze runs across the entrance wall. The title CHANCE DI UN CAPOLAVORO (2024) comes from a work by Marco Mazzucconi of 1989. In this new work, the artist neutralises the violence of a recurring element in his practice— the scissors—by softening their tips with delicate white goose feathers. Maloberti describes this act of hyperdecoration as “whimsical” yet incisive.
Maloberti once again alters the architecture of the space with his work TILT (2024), where a guardrail, typically used as a road safety device, is mounted on “Bianco Altissimo Henraux” marble bases, and curves in the shape of a sharp contour, thereby forcing audiences to follow along a pre-determined path.
Sudden, frightening sounds evoking a primordial past punctuate the space like a song. Never-heard-before music comes from an unusual instrument: the barrels of a rifle turned into flutes. The video piece METAL PANIC (2024) demonstrates how art manages to transform the original purpose of objects.
On the parterre eight neon lights of different sizes give shape to MARTELLATE (2024), a project that Maloberti has been carrying forward for more than thirty years, which includes some of the artist’s most famous political statements, aphorisms, and poetic acts.
In PAC’s Project Room, Marcello Maloberti returns to his roots by presenting a selection of works that have been particularly significant for his artistic career, almost all dating back to the 1990s. Among these, FAMIGLIA METAFISICA (1990) portrays the artist together with his mother and grandmother in the middle of his living room in Casalpusterlengo (Lodi). The image portrays the domestic realm and provincial life, with a strong reference to Neorealism.
In this photograph from 2006, Maloberti clings precariously to a road sign marking the entrance to Casalpusterlengo.
He kept the sign and ended up using it as part of a performance at the Milan Triennale Design Museum more than ten years later. For this exhibition, it has been placed together with the installation KASALPUSTERLENGO (2015) within the spaces of the Pavilion. The road sign appears on the ground, like an archaeological find; a fragment the artist cannot let go of.
For the opening evening, Marcello Maloberti presents two performances inside the spaces of the PAC. BOLIDI (2024) consists of sculptures/tables which, during the opening, some performers wear and carry through the exhibition space. In SIRONI (2024) a performer cuts up fragments that belong to Sironi’s imaginative universe, turning the floor into a vast, dimensionless canvas.
Scheduled for every Saturday and Sunday, LA SUGGERITRICE (2024) directly involves visitors.
The performance BACIAMANO is scheduled on the last weekend of the exhibition, starring the actor Ninetto Davoli.
at PAC, Milan
until February 9, 2025
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