Are you in love? No I’m in Milano

Milan, 18 September – From 19 September to 14 October, the Roman Forum room of the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana will host the exhibition “Are you in love? No I’m in Milano” by artist Pietro Terzini, (un)curated by Antonello Grimaldi and Pietro Terzini. On display will be 11 previously unseen works on paper, 6 neon pieces and 3 iconic mirrors created by the artist with Cassina.

‘This exhibition is a true journey into the soul of Milan, a city pulsating with life, creativity and culture. Pietro Terzini, with his unique style, invites us to discover a world of works on paper, neon and mirrors, where words are the absolute protagonists. But that’s not all: alongside the texts are iconic figurative elements, true tributes to Milan and the Ambrosiana (the first library open to the public in Europe and the oldest museum in Milan), including Caravaggio’s Canestra and the Madonnina, which take us into a profound dialogue between memory and contemporaneity and inevitably to a comparison between the present and the past, between classical iconography and
pop-contemporary cultural language.

‘Are you in love? No, I’m in Milan’. Terzini was not yet born in 1974 when Memo Remigisang “Innamorati a Milano” (In love in Milan), yet to some, the title of the exhibition could be linked to that song: this is the true strength of Pietro Terzini.

At the heart of Terzini’s work is the word that becomes form, message and reflection. When words take shape and become a work of art, everyone can read and interpret them as they wish. ‘Pietro Terzini does not need curators’: a statement that sums up then poetics
of a language that is accessible and open to all, in which the viewer’s interpretation becomes an integral part of the work.

The themes addressed throughout the exhibition range from love to personal fulfilment, from the tension between materiality and spirituality, to the central theme of the entire exhibition: the judgement of others. Through direct, ironic and provocative phrases,
the artist invites the public to question how much weight the opinions of others have in the construction of one’s own identity, and to claim the freedom to be oneself.

A distinctive feature of the project is the choice of media: all the works are created on fashion brand bags, transformed into artistic surfaces. This operation, which blends aesthetics, consumption, creative gesture and circular economy, is a declared homage to the city
of Milan, the fashion capital and the artist’s everyday setting. Terzini, in his creative journey through text, image and reflection, cultural references and irony, contemporary aesthetics and historical memory, transforms words into a form of contemporary haiku, albeit in an artistic-visual context rather than a traditional poetic one (haiku are short poems that capture a moment or an emotion, often related to nature, love and the essence of life). However, Terzini’s works differ from traditional haiku in that they use a non-traditional medium,
adding an element of social and cultural criticism to his works, which are more explicitly conceptual and ironic than traditional haiku.