Art and Science Converge in Palazzo Poggi Exhibition

The exhibition 'The Complex. A Scientific Encounter' opens at Palazzo Poggi in Bologna, running until August 31. Curated by Gino Gianuizzi and Wolfgang Weileder, the show creates a generative dialogue between past and present, questioning the relationship between art and science. It draws on Luigi Ferdinando Marsili's concept of 'complex,' which explored the intersection of arts and sciences when he founded the Istituto delle Scienze e delle Arti Liberali in 1711 in the same palace. Contemporary works are displayed alongside anatomical specimens, astronomical artifacts, and Ulisse Aldrovandi's collection, activating new perspectives. The curators emphasize that each artist's relationship with the museum developed differently, resulting in a show that is neither didactic nor supplementary to the collection. Through site-specific and non-site-specific interventions, the exhibition investigates the active power of objects and their ability to shape how we know and interpret the world. Video installations, masks, ceramics, textiles, kaleidoscopes, and shadows quietly inhabit the museum's display cases, exploring themes such as biodiversity loss, erasure, and metamorphosis. The works redefine looking and being looked at, transforming the relationship between object and observer into a poetic, sometimes monstrous, scenario.