Fondazione ICA Milano presents La simmetria della fragilità / The symmetry of fragility, a collective exhibition conceived and realized in occasion of Massimo De Carlo’s Virtual Space, dedicated to one of the most interesting topics that emerged during the over 70 days of lockdown. 

The show is part of the project Risorgimento - Milan Virtual Art Summer, promoted during the summer by Massimo De Carlo. The gallery invited five exhibition spaces of Milan to experiment the union between art and virtual reality through its VSpace. ICA Milano will be protagonist from Tuesday 23rd June to Sunday 5th July 2020 with the third exhibition proposal of VSpace. 

La simmetria della fragilità / The symmetry of fragility is curated by Alberto Salvadori and Luigi Fassi and presents a selection of works by Maliheh Afnan, Miriam Cahn, Lisetta Carmi, Louis Fratino, Arjan Martins, Jennifer Packer, Andy Robert, Cathy Josefowitz and Portia Zvavahera. 
The virtual exhibition gathers together works realized by authors with different origins, cognitive encyclopaedias and generations, sharing an approach to the real characterised by values ascribable to the concept of “fragility”. 
Contemporary communication language evaluates fragility as a negative condition of inferiority, a defect of origin to be corrected, leading to social marginalization and condemnation to uselessness. Nevertheless, it is a common feeling, supported by art’s reflections in all art forms and by medical and psychological researches – that fragility conceals values of sensitivity, delicacy, dignity and kindness. A prime quality of fragility is its ability to foster understanding of one another, opening up to the dimension of care and community, up to the intuition of the unspeakable and unseen that accompany us in life. 

Within the curatorial text, curators Alberto Salvadori and Luigi Fassi write: 

“Fragility is a constantly instable balance but also an essential fact of every moment of human condition. This is why fragility is also a state of grace, element of formation and growth through experiences at any stage of life, founding condition for the adventure of interpersonal experiences. Fragility, in the words of Eugenio Borgna, is the destiny of each of us and is intertwined with the awareness of precariousness of human nature, in which everyone is a person as open to a relational dimension, made up of words, listening gestures and acceptance of others. The relationship between man and nature is enriched by images and words created by individuals to share their experience of the world”. 

“Words, that are in their essence as fragile as images, are in fact extremely powerful as they are carriers of unexpected, transcendent, luminous and dark meanings. To be able to listen one shall keep quiet, to be able to see one should listen. Not everything can be said, not everything can be expressed; a painting’s silence allows us to listen without the illusion of being able to explain thoughts and emotions that we feel when we are in front of it. Silence and words, muted by their fragility, can reveal themselves as more powerful, more sound and more resistant than someone who speaks. Avoiding useless words in the quest for necessary ones, requires the space of silence and the search for another element – joy – that is suspended between fragility and the absolute. Joy doesn’t live on the past nor on the future, it consists of a moment of delightful growth of the present, radically different from happiness”. 

Bringing further the digital approach applied to Charles Atlas’ exhibition and to the program of lectures Connessioni Inventive, held in collaboration with MAN of Nuoro, Fondazione ICA Milano takes another step towards the virtual experimentation, imagining new ways to share and promote contemporary arts through a remote interaction that becomes immersive thanks to the 3D technology.3 

THE ARTISTS 

Maliheh Afnan (1935 Haifa, Palestine - 2016 London, UK).
Miriam Cahn (1949 Basel, Switzerland). Lives and works in Stampa, Switzerland.
Lisetta Carmi (1924 Genoa, Italy). Lives in Cisternino, Brindisi, Italy. 
Louis Fratino (1993 Annapolis, USA). Lives and works in New York, USA. 
Arjan Martins (1960 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brasile.
Jennifer Packer (1984 Philadelphia, USA). Lives and works in New York, USA. 
Andy Robert (1984 Les Cayes, Haiti). Lives and works in New York, USA.
Cathy Josefowitz (1956 New York, USA – 2014 Geneva, Switzerland). 
Portia Zvavahera (1985 Harare, Zimbabwe). Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe. 

MASSIMO DE CARLO 
RISORGIMENTO - MILAN VIRTUAL ART SUMMER 
With RISORGIMENTO Milan Virtual Art Summer the gallery Massimo De Carlo gathers together the most interesting contemporary art realities in Milan through an unusual and unexpected format. During the summer the new virtual space Massimo De Carlo VSpace hosts five Milanese spaces that have conceived and realized specific projects for such occasion. Realized through the use of contemporary technologies of three-dimensional design, Massimo De Carlo VSpace offers an immersive experience enjoyable through the web and the hardware Oculus. Because its digital nature, the VSpace is a flexible and dynamic identity: the perfect platform to be used and shared by different realities to experiment a new exhibition methodology for the system of contemporary art.