Twenty years ago, Fondazione Garuzzo embarked on a journey to bring Italian contemporary art beyond national borders and foster dialogue with the world. Through exhibitions, residencies, workshops and publications, in collaboration with public and private institutions, the Foundation has built bridges between cultures, from China to Iran, from Latin America to Africa. This twentieth anniversary is an opportunity to look back with gratitude at those who have contributed to this journey, while looking ahead with the same curiosity that inspired its beginnings.
For years, Castiglia di Saluzzo has been the home of this exploration. Here, the Foundation’s Permanent Exhibition and Collection is renewed several times a year: artworks change, move and acquire new meanings through their relationships with other works and their surroundings. The place remains, but its form is never fixed. This is the essence of an impermanent collection, reflecting the Foundation’s own ability to evolve while remaining true to its identity.
Artists, themes and connections change, while one principle remains constant: bringing contemporary art to the public and giving young artists space alongside established masters, without hierarchies. Rather than opposing generations, the exhibition encourages dialogue between them, allowing emerging research to reinterpret established practices and draw inspiration from their roots. Each artwork thus becomes part of an open conversation, offering new interpretations as its context and relationships evolve.
The new installation places particular emphasis on installation art, inviting visitors to enter, move through and physically engage with the artwork. Space becomes an integral part of the artistic experience. The exhibition also explores unconventional materials, techniques and surfaces, often drawn from technology, industry and everyday life, expanding the possibilities of artistic expression.
The works address key issues of our time, including ecology and our fragile relationship with the environment, the challenges and contradictions of new technologies, and the ambivalent nature of constant connectivity, which brings people together while sometimes isolating them. Urban peripheries emerge as spaces of vitality and invention, while irony offers a subtle means of expressing contemporary unease, balancing seriousness with playfulness.
There is no prescribed route through the exhibition. Visitors are invited to discover connections and contradictions, follow their own paths and construct personal interpretations. As the collection continues to evolve, its underlying vision remains unchanged: each new installation will open up different perspectives and tell new stories.
