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.

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

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 Solo Exhibition, "Sequence of a journey" Milena Barberis, test by Manuela Gandini,  Amaci Contemporary day, Milano 2022

I go down the stairs and I'm in another world. The former bunker is a minimalist, welcoming, almost domestic poetic armory. It is a short step from the Milanese traffic to the cyborg universe of Barberis' humanoids. Female replicants, with angelic faces, large eyes and pink skin, await, soullessly. A thrill runs through me and I remember that science fiction is already here: in biotech labs, space stations, Japanese bars and on Mars. A video runs in a loop, showing catastrophes caused by an enraged Nature, words, and signs of alarm and pacification. Cement chimneys, echoes of war and religion, shamanic apparitions and mechanical lives can also be seen in the wall paintings and unfold in front of our imperturbable third eye.

 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