Le cose che non sappiamo 

There are things that escape our understanding, unexplored spaces that dwell on the threshold between the visible and the invisible. Le cose che non sappiamo ventures into this liminal dimension, creating a dialogue between the works of thirteen Italian artists active between Italy and France. The exhibition’s title evokes a universal theme: the tension between what we can know and what eludes us, between certainty and mystery. Beatrice Alici, Andrea Barzaghi, Claudio Coltorti, Giuseppe Lo Cascio, Giulia Mangoni, Matisse Mesnil, Pietro Moretti, Lulù Nuti, Marta Ravasi, Luca Resta, Luca Rubegni, Erik Saglia, and Sofia Silva paint, sculpt, and construct worlds that oscillate between the imaginary and the real, between a shared vision and a profoundly interior dimension. Their interpretation of things—and, with them, of the world—composes a heterogeneous mosaic that takes shape in the exhibition through contrast and difference. Yet their works seem imbued with an invisible awareness: things, by their very nature, can never be fully known. This is their paradox, as well as one of the few certainties of our time. Many have interpreted this as a defining condition of the contemporary era: we believed we could know, possess, and control everything. Then things seemed to rebel—until today, when they appear to have definitively slipped from our grasp. It feels like the start of a downhill race, with your heart pounding: the rush of speed that catches you by surprise, the fear of falling, and the wonder of staying balanced. You wonder where you’re headed, what you’re facing, whether—and against what—you’ll crash, and why. Yet you keep pedaling, driven by that initial impulse that compels you to «seguire questo domandare fin dove esso conduce, tenergli testa e non eluderlo con domande spicciole», because it is «soltanto nel rigore del domandare che giungiamo in prossimità dell’indicibile» (Martin Heidegger, L’essenza della verità, Torino 1997, pp. 136 e 124). There is an established path, one we often take to understand reality—or at least to come closer to it. Massimo Cacciari sums it up: «Noi possediamo la cosa quando ne abbiamo l’idea» (Della cosa ultima, Adelphi, Milano 2004, p. 443). This process usually begins with the name (ónoma), the first sign through which we indicate and name things. It then moves to the logos, the discourse that defines their properties with words and concepts, and culminates in the eídolon: the image that finally makes the abstract idea visible. In their diversity, the works on display deconstruct this process, moving, in a way, backward. They do not begin with the name or the definition: their point of departure is instead the eídolon, the image that imposes itself on the senses before being interpreted. Le cose che non sappiamo Art, after all, does not exist to possess what it represents, but to question it. It is a mental construct, a reinterpretation, an act that embraces the unknown not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a fertile field of wonder. In this way, the path of knowledge becomes circular: a journey through fragments and suggestions, a continuous intertwining of recent and past stories, personal and collective narratives, human and non-human elements, natural and artificial components, with a constant return to what escapes us. Le cose che non sappiamo thus shifts from being a limitation to announcing a possibility: to view the everyday as a space still waiting to be invented. Text written by Giorgia Aprosio