Project Space: a new venue for contemporary art exhibition and dissemination at Palazzo Strozzi
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi has launched Project Space, a brand new exhibition space, dedicated to emerging contemporary artists and conceived as a platform for research and exploration of trailblazing art practices. The new space, open to the public for free, sits on the ground floor of the Palace, replacing the courtyard bookshop, that has now been moved upstairs next to the temporary exhibition store. This strategic choice reflects the purpose of the Foundation to focus their activity on fostering new opportunities for artistic production and enhancing the engagement with a wider and younger audience. The opening show of the new space is The hollow men, a solo work by young artist from Cortona Giulia Cenci and curated by the Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Arturo Galansino.
The display is organised throughout the three rooms of the former store: at the center of the main room stands a floor-to-ceiling high installation made up of a series of Archimedean screws and surrounded by an army of aluminium humanoid figures. These hybrid structures are the result of human and animal anatomic moulds welded together with metal and plant element, that the artist has towerd by enigmatic wolf-like heads, suggesting hybridized creatures, poised between life and death. The adjacent rooms hosts a three-headed figure, while the final room showcases drawings and notes by the artists, offering a closer insight into her practice and research.
The last room of the display also showcases the 1925 eponymous poem by T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Man“. During the presentation to the press, Cenci has revealed that she had only come across this specific work by Eliot as the conception of the show was already well into its development, and that she had regarded this discovery as a perfect coincidental encounter. The poem speaks of the hardship suffered by the world population trying to recover from the First World War trauma, as well as it conveys the sense of inability to redefine their values and set free from a state of lifelessness that the war and its aftermath had brought along. In Cenci’s view, The Hollow Man becomes the epitome of the contemporary human condition, stuck in a state of incommunicability and seemingly unaware of the verge of the precipice we all stand on. Or maybe just unable to take action and work towards a reawakening and reappropriation of our destiny.
Gilia cenci The Hollow Man will be on show at Palazzo Strozzi Project Space until August 31st 2025
