Maurizio Bertinetti's 'Corporation of Art' at Tommaso Calabro in Venice

The Tommaso Calabro gallery in Venice is presenting works by Maurizio Bertinetti through June 21, 2025, as part of its Pop (The Chapel) Up program, which highlights artists with irreverent approaches to contemporary art. Bertinetti (born 1955 in Turin) is described as an 'archeologist of the present' who uses an ironic, corrosive language to decipher symbols, myths, and relics of everyday life. His works avoid harmony and coherence, preferring short circuits, rebuses, and enigmas. The exhibition, titled 'Bertinetti & Co.,' functions as a 'temporary corporation of art,' where the artist's own creations dialogue with pieces from his personal collection. The curatorial gesture becomes artistic, connecting his works to consumerist brands, kitsch idols, pop icons, and his spiritual masters. Bertinetti's practice is influenced by the Situationist International and the concept of détournement, and he has interacted with artists such as Lucio Fontana, Meret Oppenheim, Andy Warhol, and Mario Merz. The gallery states that his work reveals a 'causticity made of love and detachment, entropy, order, and re-invention,' constructing a grammar of modernity that exposes the limits and idiosyncrasies of Western life. Bertinetti questions what it means to produce meaning in a contemporary world oversaturated with signs, celebrating his artistic references with a gesture that is both affectionate and irreverent, while problematizing the relationship with the present.