CONSIDERING BOILER VENTING
Linda Carrara, Karen Knorr, Alwin Lay, Tiziano Martini, Andrea Mirabelli, Markus Saile, The Cool Couple.
Opening: July 16th 2025, h 6 pm
Visit the exhibition from July 16th to September 27th 2025
The exhibition is conceived as a space for releasing tension, similar to a safety valve, responding to the current acceleration of technology. The works — ranging from painting to photography, from objects to digital elaborations — reflect a widespread state of anxiety without being overwhelmed by it. The tension remains constantly active but is regulated by the artists’ skills, who achieve their poetic goals without renouncing the use of openly technological tools.
The focus is not on the truth of images, but on the reactions triggered by confusion, seduction, and disorientation. Visual, perceptual, and ideological deception — long regarded as a limitation or a danger in art — is here embraced as a method of understanding and as a challenge, both ambiguous and ironic, to the technological context we inhabit.
Venting is a necessary action to prevent implosion. Tension fluctuates, and the release valves maintain a fragile balance in which a positive—though not definitive—idea of technological progress can emerge. By embracing strategies such as irony, intimacy, wonder, the memory of nature, adherence to reality, and by creating possible or probable narratives, the participating artists point to paths of survival through the power of imagination brought to life by art.
The exhibition presents itself as both an inquiry and a moment of shared reflection, as well as a tool to explore how our mental health maintains balance, processes, and detects danger within the complex physical reality we inhabit. The notion of “magnificent and progressive destinies” remains unresolved, as the state of tension is ongoing and unstable. In times of historical disruption and imbalance, activating Boiler Venting allows us to identify forms and attempts that are still taking shape.
Artists bio:
Linda Carrara (Bergamo, 1984) lives and works between Milan and Brussels. She studied in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (2003–2007) and was a studio assistant to Vincenzo Ferrari from 2006 to 2012. Between 2014 and 2015, she earned a Master’s degree in Multimedia Arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) at Ghent University in Belgium, and in the same year completed an internship with Michaël Borremans. Her works have been exhibited at Triennale Milano (2023) during Pittura Italiana Oggi, Cremona Art Week (2023), Public Service Gallery, Stockholm (2023), Boccanera Gallery Trento/Milan (2023–2019–2016), MAC Lissone (2023), Fondazione ICA Milano (2022), Centrul de Interes in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2022), Palazzo Reale, Milan (2021), Floris-Romer Museum in Győr, Hungary (2021), Iragui Gallery, Moscow (2019), the Italian Cultural Institute in Brussels (2018), Blanco Space, Ghent (2017), Fabrica, Moscow (2016), and L.A.C. Centre d’Art Contemporain, Sigean, France (2015). The artist recently received the “Il Talento Generoso” award promoted by Cristalfarma in 2024 and the Premio Casarini Due Torri during ArtVerona 2023. Her upcoming solo exhibition will be held at Kunstmuseum Konkret in Reutlingen, Germany.
Karen Knorr (Frankfurt am Main, 1954) grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during the 1960s. She completed her studies in Paris and London. Karen has taught, exhibited, and lectured internationally, including at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the University of Westminster, Goldsmiths, Harvard University, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She studied at the University of Westminster in the mid-1970s, where she began exhibiting photographs that engaged with debates on theories of representation and film theory—discourses that emerged between the late 1970s and early 1980s. She is currently Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey. Karen Knorr’s work has been exhibited in major museums worldwide, including Tate Britain; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the San Diego Museum of Photography, California; the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; the Kyoto Modern Museum of Art, Japan; the Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; and the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai. Her works are part of the collections of the Tate in London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the United Kingdom Government Art Collection; the Musée d’Art Moderne and the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, among others.
Alwin Lay (b. 1984, Romania) lives and works in cologne. Solo Shows include Christine König Galerie, Vienna; Artothek Cologne; Museum for Photography Braunschweig; and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein. His work has been shown at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Museum Folkwang, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunstverein Düsseldorf among others. In 2016, he was a Villa Aurora fellow in Los Angeles Alwin Lay’s conceptual work spans photography, video, sculpture, and print. He explores how image-making—especially photography—shapes our perception of reality. In his recent Picardie series, Lay uses AI as a tool of image construction. After photographing the iconic Duralex “Picardie” glass, he digitally fractures selected areas of the images using generative AI, creating calculated cracks and splinters. The work examines the intersection of analogue craft and machine learning, challenging photography’s claim to truth and reflecting on the evolving role of artificial intelligence in how we perceive and configure objects. Lay’s practice remains a nuanced inquiry into visual construction and material culture.
Tiziano Martini (Soltau, 1983) lives and works in Val di Zoldo. He holds a Master’s degree in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Martini deconstructs the gestural continuity of the creative act in painting by experimenting with different techniques, timings, and materials in his multi-phase works. His paintings appear as layered visual fields, profoundly marked by a persistent need to reject predetermined outcomes, seeking instead the unexpected potential of complex, precarious, and unique material conditions. Among his recent solo exhibitions are Andreae (2023) and Firnt (2017), both held at A+B Gallery in Brescia. His most recent group exhibitions include ECC Project #4 (2022) at ECC Contemporary project room in Chieri, as well as shows in 2023 at Villa La Bollina in Serravalle Scrivia and at Art Düsseldorf with A+B Gallery. In 2022, he also took part in significant events such as Who Killed Bamby? at the Nuovo Museo di Casso for Dolomiti Contemporanee, Ecc #4 in Chieri, ArtVerona, Dog in the Window in Brescia, and once again Art Düsseldorf in Düsseldorf.
Andrea Mirabelli (Milan, 1996) graduated in Painting from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and furthered his education in 2017 at the Universität der Künste in Berlin, where he studied with Michael Müller. He gained experience as an assistant at Laboratorio Avallone in 2016/17 and again in 2021/22. He has served as a subject expert (Cultore della materia) in Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Art Languages at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, collaborating with Elisabetta Longari. Throughout his career, he has participated in several notable exhibitions, including NOVECENTO. Il secolo lungo at Galleria Giovanni Bonelli in Milan in 2024, accompanied by an original text by Aldo Nove, and La città: tra realtà e sogno at Galleria San Fedele, also in Milan, in the same year.
Markus Saile (b. 1981 in Stuttgart, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. Saile’s work convenes the space of painting, in a subtle interplay between the space where it is situated, the space it represents and the space it constructs in dialogue with architecture. Beyond the in-situ and the context, it is an investigation into painting in volume, the depth of the surface, and the extension of this practice into a performative field of action. Recent solo exhibitions include: objects in the mirror (with Alwin Lay), Artothek, Cologne, 2025; Everything Folds, DREI, Cologne, 2024; Edge to Edge, MAI 36 Galerie, Zurich, and Scala, A+B Gallery, Brescia, 2022; Separate | related, NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen; Magnetic Fields, Strabag Kunstforum, Vienna, 2020.
The Cool Couple (TCC) is an artist duo based in Milan, founded in 2012 by Niccolò Benetton (b. 1986) and Simone Santilli (b. 1987). Through a multidisciplinary approach, they explore the power and agency of images, working across visual and performative languages. Passionate about education, they teach at NABA in Milan and coordinate the BA program in Visual Arts at MADE Program. Recent exhibitions include Cremona Contemporanea (2022), Da→A: The Artists of the Bevilacqua La Masa Collection 1998→2018 in Venice (2022), First Place in the Table? in Szczecin, Poland (2022), Every Artist at City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand (2021), Abnormal at the Tbilisi Biennial, Georgia (2020), The Silk Road, with shows in museums in Beijing, Xi’an, Yerevan, Tbilisi, Ankara, Sofia, and Chisinau (2020), Photo Open Up in Padua (2021), Chi Non Salta. Football, Culture, Identity at MuFoCo, Cinisello Balsamo (2021), and BienNolo 2019, the contemporary art biennial in the Nolo district of Milan.