The exhibition Coming to Light by the artistic duo Antonello Ghezzi, curated by Giovanni Gardini, opens on Thursday, December 11 at 6:30 PM at Museo Lercaro.
The show tells the story of a work that never actually existed, conceived in 2020 during the lockdown. Unable to access their studio, the artists imagined new spaces in which to work: their workshop and tools became the outdoors—fields, sky, sun, and nature. “Our only salvation,” the artists emphasize, “has always been imagination: that ability to see what is not yet visible, to envision another reality,” echoing the thought of physicist and Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger: “The world is everything that happens and also everything that can happen.”
Inspired by the starry sky and luminous bodies, the artists developed a project in which hay bales light up by themselves at night. They imagined creating a special net capable of absorbing daylight to release it at night, delivering it to farmers in remote valleys to cover vast fields, where the grass has been cut and the night is particularly dark. With a dreamy vision, they imagined a vast land-art work that brings a starry sky to the meadow, created by both nature and human effort.
From this idea emerged a concrete research project: an agricultural net manufacturer, Novatex, friends who are farmers, and numerous enthusiastic participants were involved. After a year of collaborative work, it became clear that the project could not be realized as originally imagined: weather conditions, light pollution, and the duration of sunset are uncontrollable variables belonging solely to nature. As with farmers, sometimes the harvest is not as expected, but what remains are the relationships, experiences, and, above all, the certainty that imagination—rain or shine—always finds new ways to express itself.
At Museo Lercaro, this story is told through drawings, sketches, set photographs, materials, works created along the way, and the continuation of Antonello Ghezzi’s artistic research. At the exhibition’s climax, visitors are invited into the magical world of the artists and their way of seeing, because sometimes it’s just a matter of frequencies, of choosing how to look at reality—perhaps through the peephole of an invisible door.
The exhibition emphasizes collaboration: set photographs are by Roberto Cerè, and sound installations by Alessandro Gaffuri. The project also involves the young people from the youth center I Cortili del Villaggio of Ceis A.R.T.E., who participated in a workshop. This exhibition marks the first collaboration between Museo Lercaro and the Cineteca di Bologna: on the opening day, December 11, audiovisual content related to the project will be screened in Sala Cervi, while the short film will have its premiere in 2026.
