Robert Barry

For the new spaces at Piano Parco, we invited gallery owner Massimo Minini to curate an exhibition by a contemporary artist, in relation to the hybrid spaces of Cucina Triennale. Following Alberto Garutti, the protagonist of this new chapter is Robert Barry (New York, 1936), one of the pioneers of conceptual art. Since the 1960s, Barry has shifted his focus from image to thought, transforming the work of art into a tool for interpreting reality rather than an object to be contemplated. With him—and with artists such as Weiner, Brouwn, Wilson, Huebler, and Kosuth—words become artistic material, capable of replacing representation and opening up further meanings. His essential vocabulary, less than three hundred terms, indicates attitudes rather than things: actual, different, intimate allude to what changes, what escapes fixity. Barry thus invites us to experience fertile uncertainty, in which each word is transformed in the space and time it inhabits.