Space by Milena Barberis

The former Second World War bunker, a refuge for the inhabitants of the building in via Bardelli, 10, Milan, and now the artist's studio, takes the name of "Al Magico Saltello". The name comes from a poem that Ermanno Krumm dedicated to Milena Barberis, his partner and describes the emotions of their meeting.

“Breath” by Ermanno Krumm, Lo Specchio Collection, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2005.

Manuela Gandini

Rarefied like mountain air, art soars above the smoking ruins and festering swamps of every present moment. And it smells sweet. But sometimes miasmas rise, and everything blends into a liquid kaleidoscope that overturns dreams, erases boundaries, and ignites passions. A polysemic and festive community—despite ongoing anxieties and systemic violence—is hosted in a former bunker, now Milena Barberis's studio. In a minimalist dimension, mirroring the minimalist works themselves, this new space is a hub for cultural production, critical thought, and the future. It's a multi-voiced visual embrace. Small, compact, corrosive, mysterious, and dreamlike works confront a reality "modified" by media broadcasters. All the precarity of the artist—a hero and revolutionary in an era without revolutions—is concentrated in a single place. Theirs (the artists') is a permanent, daily revolution, taking place within themselves, between themselves and the work, between the work and the world. And if the heroes are poets, musicians, performers, dreamers, you'll see them perform "magical little leaps." The title of the collective exhibition, which evokes lightness and evanescence, comes from a poem Ermanno Krumm wrote for Milena. Those words from back then are acutely contemporary because (by now we've all understood) all art is contemporary. Meanwhile, the exhibition already looks beyond the future, sprinkling dew on arid land, opening the eyes of the resigned, the dead, the poor in spirit, and the marathon runners. Everyone in this community contributes a piece of imagined freedom with works that oscillate between abstraction, denunciation, geopolitics, feminism, transhumanism, photography, drama, silence... In the neoliberal era of social domestication, a laboratory opens, independent as an island, where one can experiment with friendship (instead of competition), encounter (instead of judgment), love (instead of indifference), poetry (instead of prose). Once again, it's proof that the sprites of art are always active and present in the artists' little leaps.

 VIDEO  Collective Exhibition  "Un Magico saltello", Poem by Ermanno Krumm and Test by Manuela Gandini, Milano 2022

  VIDEO Solo Exhibition, "Sequence of a journey" , Amaci,  Contemporary day, Milano 2022

 VIDEO "Percorsi" Exhibition by Giuseppe Candiani and Milena Barberis, Milano 2023

 VIDEO "Ora di luce" leggendo poesie di Ermanno Krumm

VIDEO Mostra collettiva  "Artisti" Al Magico Saltello Milano 2024