Fabrizio Cotognini: Transitum
From April 3rd to July 19th, 2025, BUILDING GALLERY presents Transitum, a solo exhibition by artist Fabrizio Cotognini, curated by Marina Dacci.
The exhibition, the artist鈥檚 first solo project in the gallery spaces, is conceived as an excursus on his artistic research, articulated in several chapters, which are fluidly woven into the exhibition space forming a web of connections.
In this articulated path, a vast selection of more than 90 artworks created specifically for the exhibition. It includes microfusions, sculptures, installations, and drawings (some of them made on 18th Century etching, of which Cotognini is passionate collector), finds its place at BUILDING GALLERY.
The exhibition explores and draws heavily on iconographies of the past inspired by epic, mythology, and alchemy.
In this macro-narrative, concepts of transformation, memory, identity, and knowledge take shape: in these, the power of the imagines agentes actualize our relationship with the ancient to interrogate our present.
Thus, the figurative elements of the imagines agentes act as temporal condensations capable of activating our memory.
As curator Marina Dacci observes, 鈥淭he title of the exhibition becomes a metaphor for the artist鈥檚 own posture aimed at continuous research. Transitum narrates an infinite potential of both matter and human nature: nature in relation to human being overbearingly appears throughout the exhibition, literally in a bird鈥檚 eye view.鈥�
It is precisely a flock of birds, made of bronze micro-castings and titled Hybridatio Mundi (2024-2025), lays themselves in the gallery spaces as a symbol of union between heaven and earth, between the divine and human worlds. Scattered on the balconies and terraces, as well as in the exhibition path of the three interior floors, the little birds embody par excellence the symbol of rebirth and transformation.
Transformation is precisely what underlies the entire exhibition project by modulating itself on multiple levels:transformation is meant as an evolutionary dimension of the Self, but also as an alchemical process of mutation of matter, especially metals. Finally, and at an even deeper level, transformation is intended as a metaphor for one鈥檚 path toward self-realization.
Within this conceptual framework, the ground floor of BUILDING GALLERY proposes the theme of the conversation between nature and culture, placing the micro-casting Alveare (2025) in dialogue with La Casa dell鈥橝rte (2025), a 3D model reproducing the gallery spaces: 鈥渁 gallery-opificio that welcomes stories and imagination just as the beehive placed in front of this one, that becomes an activator and multiplier of energy to produce nourishment鈥� (Marina Dacci). The two works thus evoke the virtuous dialogue between nature and culture, in which nature becomes an evolutionary model in terms of building and relational functioning for places of culture.
The exhibition continues with a chapter called Distopie (2024) 鈥� works developed on 18th Century etchings 鈥� which are transformed into true aberrations of the contemporary. In fact, the plates juxtapose classical architectures 鈥� paradigms of ancient beauty and harmony 鈥� with their contemporary branding, the offspring of consumer society: 鈥渁 futuristic reality that prefigures technological and commercial colonization, and the prevailing bombardment of images, often violent and destructive, to which we are subjected.鈥�
The concept of transformation declined in the idea of 鈥渕ultiple identity,鈥� underlies the portrait cycle Who is Christian Rosenkreutz (2024). As the curator notes, 鈥渢he series expands the fluid concept of identity transformation from the indefinable to the uncertain, from the esoteric to the plural.鈥� This theme is expressed by the different personalities immortalized in the portraits, also finding a natural development in the works dedicated to L鈥橝ndrogino e il Doppio (2024) and in Studi sull鈥橝lchimia (2024); among the latter is presented Alchimia Mundi (2025), an artist鈥檚 book over five meters long, taken from an English Psalter from the 1400s, that occupies a niche in the exhibition space, unfolding like a waterfall and welcoming rich imagery on the creation of the world.
The tour concludes with No Monster鈥檚 Land (2018), exhibited on the second floor, in which the concept of transformation is developed both as hybridization and as a life-death relationship, understood not as an end but as an opportunity for evolution.
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From April 3rd to July 19th, 2025, BUILDING GALLERY presents Transitum, a solo exhibition by artist Fabrizio Cotognini, curated by Marina Dacci.
The exhibition, the artist鈥檚 first solo project in the gallery spaces, is conceived as an excursus on his artistic research, articulated in several chapters, which are fluidly woven into the exhibition space forming a web of connections.
In this articulated path, a vast selection of more than 90 artworks created specifically for the exhibition. It includes microfusions, sculptures, installations, and drawings (some of them made on 18th Century etching, of which Cotognini is passionate collector), finds its place at BUILDING GALLERY.
The exhibition explores and draws heavily on iconographies of the past inspired by epic, mythology, and alchemy.
In this macro-narrative, concepts of transformation, memory, identity, and knowledge take shape: in these, the power of the imagines agentes actualize our relationship with the ancient to interrogate our present.
Thus, the figurative elements of the imagines agentes act as temporal condensations capable of activating our memory.
As curator Marina Dacci observes, 鈥淭he title of the exhibition becomes a metaphor for the artist鈥檚 own posture aimed at continuous research. Transitum narrates an infinite potential of both matter and human nature: nature in relation to human being overbearingly appears throughout the exhibition, literally in a bird鈥檚 eye view.鈥�
It is precisely a flock of birds, made of bronze micro-castings and titled Hybridatio Mundi (2024-2025), lays themselves in the gallery spaces as a symbol of union between heaven and earth, between the divine and human worlds. Scattered on the balconies and terraces, as well as in the exhibition path of the three interior floors, the little birds embody par excellence the symbol of rebirth and transformation.
Transformation is precisely what underlies the entire exhibition project by modulating itself on multiple levels:transformation is meant as an evolutionary dimension of the Self, but also as an alchemical process of mutation of matter, especially metals. Finally, and at an even deeper level, transformation is intended as a metaphor for one鈥檚 path toward self-realization.
Within this conceptual framework, the ground floor of BUILDING GALLERY proposes the theme of the conversation between nature and culture, placing the micro-casting Alveare (2025) in dialogue with La Casa dell鈥橝rte (2025), a 3D model reproducing the gallery spaces: 鈥渁 gallery-opificio that welcomes stories and imagination just as the beehive placed in front of this one, that becomes an activator and multiplier of energy to produce nourishment鈥� (Marina Dacci). The two works thus evoke the virtuous dialogue between nature and culture, in which nature becomes an evolutionary model in terms of building and relational functioning for places of culture.
The exhibition continues with a chapter called Distopie (2024) 鈥� works developed on 18th Century etchings 鈥� which are transformed into true aberrations of the contemporary. In fact, the plates juxtapose classical architectures 鈥� paradigms of ancient beauty and harmony 鈥� with their contemporary branding, the offspring of consumer society: 鈥渁 futuristic reality that prefigures technological and commercial colonization, and the prevailing bombardment of images, often violent and destructive, to which we are subjected.鈥�
The concept of transformation declined in the idea of 鈥渕ultiple identity,鈥� underlies the portrait cycle Who is Christian Rosenkreutz (2024). As the curator notes, 鈥渢he series expands the fluid concept of identity transformation from the indefinable to the uncertain, from the esoteric to the plural.鈥� This theme is expressed by the different personalities immortalized in the portraits, also finding a natural development in the works dedicated to L鈥橝ndrogino e il Doppio (2024) and in Studi sull鈥橝lchimia (2024); among the latter is presented Alchimia Mundi (2025), an artist鈥檚 book over five meters long, taken from an English Psalter from the 1400s, that occupies a niche in the exhibition space, unfolding like a waterfall and welcoming rich imagery on the creation of the world.
The tour concludes with No Monster鈥檚 Land (2018), exhibited on the second floor, in which the concept of transformation is developed both as hybridization and as a life-death relationship, understood not as an end but as an opportunity for evolution.
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