Corso di Porta Ticinese 87. 20123 Milan. Italy
WIZARD LAB is pleased to present Brenva, Stefano Cerio’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.
The exhibition showcases a body of new work from Cerio’s ongoing Brenva series, focusing on the progressive and rapid recession of the Brenva glacier in Mont Blanc.
Following the Aquila project (2019–2021)—where the artist installed inflatable churches, castles, and slides throughout the landscape surrounding the earthquake-stricken city of L’Aquila—Cerio returns to the use of inflatables in his photographic work to prompt reflection on the climate crisis and the morphological changes to the planet caused by human activity, in this case focusing on the rapid retreat of a glacier.
In his Brenva series, the artist captures the stark transformation of the glacier, placing a blue inflatable wall at the center of a landscape that now resembles a lunar terrain. Positioned where the glacier once ended, the inflatable structure highlights the expanding surface of the mountain now exposed due to the melting ice. This gesture becomes a poignant symbol of the boundaries of human perception and our collective inability to envision the future.
In his text for the homonymous book recently published by Quodlibet, critic Stefano Chiodi writes: “The Brenva glacier is a body that no longer exists. The photograph recalls it in the form of a lack. The sign traced in its emptiness—the blue inflatable or the white silhouettes—is a threshold: open not so much to what has been, but to what remains of our ability to remember, to bear witness, to feel.”
The exhibition features a selection of six large- and medium-format photographs, two backlit works, and a video.
Cerio’s work, rooted in a conceptual approach that blurs the boundaries between photography, contemporary art, and environmental art, establishes a dialogue between artistic languages to document and make visible the profound transformations currently reshaping the Earth.
Stefano Cerio lives and works between Rome, where he was born in 1962, and Paris. Since 2001, he has focused on research photography and video. In 2024, he exhibited at the MAXXI Museum as part of an installation project featuring works from the museum’s collection, curated by artist Alex Da Corte. In 2021, Cerio created a work for the new MAXXI museum location in L’Aquila, followed in 2022 by the publication of the book Aquila by Hatje Cantz. In 2019, the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris showcased his Constructions instables series. In 2018, the Museo Pignatelli in Naples dedicated a major retrospective to him, while in 2017 Hatje Cantz published the book Night Games, which led to a solo exhibition at Camera in Turin. His 2015 series Chinese Fun, first exhibited in 2013 at Noire Contemporary Art in Turin, was published as a book by Hatje Cantz and shown at the VOLUME! Foundation in Rome. In 2014, he exhibited Cruise Ship at the Mois de la Photo in Paris. In 2012, he presented the Night Ski series at Studio Trisorio in Naples, and in 2011, WinterAquapark at the Forma Foundation in Milan, accompanied by a publication from Contrasto. That same year, he showed the video Summer Aquapark at MAXXI in Rome. In 2010, Cerio held two exhibitions at the Galerie Italienne in Paris and participated in the group show O’Vero at the Madre Museum in Naples. In 2005, the Città della Scienza in Naples dedicated a solo show to him titled Codice Multiplo.
