#98

 

José Angelino, Alessandro Dandini de Sylva

Marco Emmanuele, Luca Grechi

Diego Miguel Mirabella
PAESE FORTUNA
group show
13/09 - 31/10/2026
opening Sunday 13/09, 3 pm - 7 pm

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Paese fortuna was the name of the shared studio of José Angelino, Alessandro Dandini de Sylva, Marco Emmanuele, Luca Grechi and Diego Miguel Mirabella, located in the former Lanificio Luciani on Via di Pietralata in Rome, on the banks of the Aniene. More than the name of a collective, Paese fortuna was the name of a place. For more than a decade, the space was inhabited by five autonomous artistic practices, distinct in their languages, materials and approaches, yet developed within a shared condition of everyday proximity. The studios were connected to one another, first by a corridor, then by an opening made in the wall that separated them. Working also meant passing through another artist’s studio, observing a work taking shape, discussing it, questioning it, or simply sharing time.

The history of this place predates that of the five artists. Pietro Fortuna established his studio there in 1989 and, between 1996 and 2004, created Opera Paese, an experience whose name referred to an idea developed by Martin Heidegger: the “country” as a place capable of bringing together the thoughts and experiences of a plurality of individuals. Years later, almost without any predetermined programme, this same possibility was reconstituted within the spaces of the Lanificio. The name Paese fortuna preserves this genealogy while transforming it: an homage, a wish, and a declaration of belonging to a place.

Between 2011 and 2023, the studio was both a workspace and a domestic space, a laboratory and a place for encounters. Over time, individual practices were joined by projects that emerged from this same community: Limone, conceived in London by Diego Miguel Mirabella with the artist Michela de Mattei, and later transferred to the Lanificio in the form of a programme of meetings and dialogues with visiting artists and curators; and Aniene, a publishing house founded by Alessandro Dandini de Sylva with the designer Filippo Nostri, in order to give an editorial form to a constellation of artists and companions that had gathered around the studio.

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The closure of the space in 2023 brought the shared occupation to an end, but not the relationships that had made it possible. To present Paese fortuna in Paris today therefore means temporarily relocating this same geography elsewhere. The exhibition does not seek a common language among the five artists, nor does it attempt to reduce their respective practices to a single identity. On the contrary, it brings their differences into relation: light and physical phenomena in the work of José Angelino; photography and the ambiguity of representation in Alessandro Dandini de Sylva’s practice; matter and spatial dispositifs in Marco Emmanuele’s work; Luca Grechi’s layered painting; and the encounters and cultural crossings explored by Diego Miguel Mirabella.

What brings them together, then, is not a form, but a history of proximity. For many years, it was enough to cross a corridor, open a door, or pass through an opening in the wall. Today, at 22.48 m2, Paese fortuna — the first presentation in France of the five artists together — attempts to reconstruct this minimal distance within the gallery space, bringing into view an artistic community founded on exchange, the autonomy of individual practices, and the conviction that creation can also emerge from a shared territory.

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Isabella Vitale

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PRESS RELEASE