Diego Marcon: Glassa and Have You Checked the Children

Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy is proud to present the exhibition Diego Marcon: Glassa, curated by Stefano Collicelli Cagol and Elena Magini. Approximately 1,000 square meters of space are transformed by Marcon into a cinematographic set-up, thanks to specific lighting with skylights on the ceiling and a display designed together with Italian architect Andrea Faraguna. The public is immersed in a unique experience, balanced on the dialogue between the treatment of emptiness, light and shadows. Glassa features both brand new site-specific artworks designed for the Pecci, alongside historic pieces by the artist. The etymology of “glassa” derives from the French word “glace” and refers, in the context of confectionery, to the coating of sugar and other liquids used to cover or decorate cakes: so sweet as to become almost nauseating, so smooth and thick as to hide any roughness underneath. Furthermore, the word refers to ice, something cold as only death can be, capable of preserving bodies. Using and overturning the logic of the entertainment industry Glassa explores questions about art, life and death, pivotal subjects in Marcon’s production. The exhibition at Centro Pecci is realized in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo.

Kunsthalle Basel, for its part, presents Diego Marcon: Have You Checked the Children, the first exhibition of the Italian artist in Switzerland, curated by Elena Filipovic. The exhibition traces the wildly vivid imagination of Diego Marcon (b. 1985), spotlighting key pieces from the last few years of the Italian artist’s production, combined with new video and sculpture shown in a series of specially conceived installations. Across these, the artist interrogates the fraught relationship between reality and representation, pathos and menace, vulnerability and absurdity—thru-lines of his practice. And if throughout Marcon reveals the inspiration of his work in the cinematic genres of horror and slapstick comedy, the musical and the Sunday cartoon, the exhibition and the unforgettable protagonists the artist creates—a murderous father, a miniature marching band, or two moles that incessantly, inexplicably count—envelop us worlds that are at once poignant, disquieting, and often more than a little uncanny. The exhibition is generously supported by the Italian Council (12th edition, 2023), the program aimed at supporting Italian contemporary art in the world promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity within the Italian Ministry of Culture. The exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel received additional support from the Isaac Dreyfus-Bernheim Foundation and the Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel.

The exhibitions Glassa at the Centro Pecci in Prato and Have You Checked the Children at Kunsthalle Basel constitute two separate exhibitions presenting recent and previously unseen works by Diego Marcon. Together, these overlapping exhibitions allow audiences to experience Marcon’s practice as never possible before, creating a survey between them of Marcon’s most iconic recent productions and each featuring new pieces destined to become iconic too. Their point of intersection is the shared presentation of the new film Dolle, 2023, whose premiere will be at the Centro Pecci, which produced the film thanks to the contribution of the “PAC2021 – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea” promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture and destined to be part of the Centro Pecci’s collections.