TRANSITIONS: Via Modena 13

In the run-up to the opening of a new building for the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut at Via Gustavo Modena 13, the Photothek is presenting a new online exhibition starting on October 14, 2024, with photographs by Martino Marangoni, Bärbel Reinhard, Daniela Tartaglia, and Giuseppe Toscano. These four photographers and lecturers from the Fondazione Studio Marangoni documented the conversion of a residential building built at the turn of the 20th century into a modern research facility. Over the course of several years they photographed the ongoing project: from the beginnings of works in 2021 to their completion in 2023 and the subsequent move in spring 2024. Since then the Photothek, some sections of the Library (including the ‘Photography Reference Library’), the Lise Meitner Group Coded Objects and the Research Group Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual have moved to their new location at Via Gustavo Modena 13. The resulting photographs offer a multifaceted documentation of the various phases of the building’s transformation, but are above all an artistic examination of the space of the construction site.

Construction sites are places of continuous change. The morphology of a site changes over days, weeks, and months. In numerous phases, layers are uncovered or covered over, walls are erected or torn down, floors are laid, pipes are installed and walls are plastered. A spatial order is created to incorporate the structures of the institute. However, a construction site also resembles a stage on which different players act and communicate with each other in a precisely defined chronological sequence following precise stage directions.

In their project ‘Cantiere Kunst’ (the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz is often simply called “Il Kunst” by the local Florentine community), the four photographers entered into a relationship with the building on Via Guastavo Modena and the constantly changing and thus transitory conditions of the construction site. During the individual construction and relocation phases, they used their cameras to repeatedly scan the body of the building, explore spaces, trace surfaces, forms and textures, but also sounds, and engage with changing atmospheric conditions and different protagonists and narratives. The online exhibition shows a selection of these artistic analyses and interpretations in five chapters as well as a video by Martino Marangoni.

The project is a cooperation between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institut and Fondazione Studio Marangoni.

zur Online-Ausstellung