Tutti i presenti che non sono mai esistiti

For the sixth year in a row, the South Tyrolean Artists’ Association has been running the StadtGalerie Brixen with the aim of establishing a venue for contemporary art in Brixen. The artistic program is conceived each year by a different curator.

In 2024, the program was successfully curated by Linnea Streit, featuring five exhibitions on current themes with a total of 21 artists.

In 2025, Marco Pietracupa convinced the jury (Ivo Barth, Federico Giudiceandrea, Eva von Ingram Harpf, Josef Prader, Stefanie Prieth, Stefano Peluso, and Alexander Zoeggeler) with his expertise and his dedicated focus on photography as a medium, exploring its innovative forms of expression.

Pietracupa, originally from Brixen and now based in Milan, dedicates his exhibition program entirely to New Photography. The focus lies on exploring how new media and emerging technologies expand the creative possibilities within photography. An artist and photographer himself, Pietracupa describes his program as follows: “The exhibitions I will curate highlight a selection of both emerging and established artists who work with innovative approaches. Each exhibition is conceived as a visual journey, inviting the audience to experience works that go beyond photography itself and immerse them in a world of expanded artistic expression.” New Photography is defined not only by technical innovations but also by the opportunity to reflect on our perception of the world. By employing digital tools, photographers are able to interpret reality in new ways and create works that engage in dialogue with diverse art forms. This intersection generates dynamic sensory experiences, enriching the photographic image with layers of meaning and complexity. The aim of the program is to introduce audiences and young artists alike to an understanding and appreciation of this new visual language. It seeks to spark curiosity, inspire interest, and foster an openness to innovative approaches in thinking and artistic development.

“Voglio vedere i mie montagne” – the last words of Giovanni Segantini (1858–1899) – inspired not only Joseph Beuys but also Leander Schwazer. For the opening of Marco Pietracupa’s exhibition cycle at the StadtGalerie Brixen, Schwazer installs Segantini’s famous words – both in German and in the grammatically incorrect Italian version used by Beuys in 1971 – as illuminated letters on both sides of the gallery, between the arcades and the cathedral square. The installation is a luminous reflection on light (Segantini), language (translation), and the site of presentation. “I want to see my mountains” – a phrase of kitschy beauty that might just as well come from a tourist brochure, but ultimately it is about what it is always about: seeing far!

Tutti i presenti che non sono mai esistiti is the result of a dialogue between Swiss artist Roger Weiss and Italian-Swiss artist Valentina De’Mathà on the concepts of identity, memory, the perception of reality, and the present.

The rooms of the StadtGalerie Brixen are transformed into a metaphorical apartment, where different levels of intimacy unfold depending on how one moves through the space.

The distinctive architecture of the gallery is defined by an elongated room with two independent entrances. Through the artistic intervention, the perception of space is divided into two entities by a chromatic duality: in one area the walls are dark, in the other white. Depending on which entrance is chosen, the exhibition is experienced in entirely different ways, opening up two possible readings of the narrative.

The interplay between the works of the two artists creates a dialectical perspective, reflecting on memory and the transformation of our perception of time, on the tension between the material and the immaterial, and on the relationship between the representation of events and their cultural and psychological analysis.

Photo: Leonhard Angerer