GROUP SHOW WITH CLÉDIA FOURNIAU
HYPOTHÈSE DE LECTURE
BIBLIOTECA DI TRINITÀ DEI MONTI, ROME, ITALY
19 SEPTEMBER – 7 NOVEMBER 2026
HYPOTHÈSE DE LECTURE inaugurates the newly restored spaces of the Antica Biblioteca at Trinità dei Monti, opening to the public from 19 September. Curated by Gaia Bobò and Teresa Ranchino, the group exhibition brings together a selection of artists from the Italian and French scenes, with particular attention to emerging practices connected to Rome and Paris. Conceived in dialogue with the history and identity of the site, the exhibition takes the library as a central curatorial reference and unfolds within an architecture designed by Belgian architect Olivier Goethals, whose intervention gives spatial form to this concept.
HYPOTHÈSE DE LECTURE stems from the desire to imagine a form of writing that begins precisely with the irretrievable loss of written texts and of the library’s collection, filling a void that the works of the invited artists reimagine through new and speculative forms. Building on these ideas, the works resonate with the history and identity of the site along several critical trajectories: their engagement with processes of loss and the dispersal of memory; the relationship between word and image, with a particular focus on writing practices and literary influences; and the generative potential of destruction and fragmentation which, through its connection to the concept of spolia, takes on a particular significance within the context of Rome’s archaeological stratification. The exhibition also seeks to foreground the echoes of Baroque aesthetics within contemporary artistic practice, drawing attention to processes of metamorphosis—of matter and of the body—as well as to the renewed use of specific aesthetic devices.
