Contemporary art: exhibitions not to be missed in Italy in AUGUST 2025
August, as we all know, is the month for light suitcases and slightly freer minds. But if, between dips in the pool and granitas, you feel the urge to feed your eyes (and your spirit), here are five contemporary art exhibitions around Italy that are really worth seeing.
No rankings, no “must-sees” at all costs. Just five carefully selected proposals that speak different languages but vibrate with the same desire: to make us think, feel, and see things from a different perspective.
Five voices, five worlds, a summer that—even in the heat—can become contemplative, reflective, and surprisingly alive. Ready to go?
Contemporary art: exhibitions to see in AUGUST 2025
The August summer edition presents five exhibitions at contemporary art foundations and museums.
As always, this is not a ranking of the best exhibitions!
These are five current proposals that offer different points for reflection, together with an overview of contemporary research.
– an investigation into landscape as a space of the mind
– a journey into identity and its perception, between absence, presence, and the evocative power of images
– a reflection on the relationship between art, time, and technology
– an independent expression of rebellion and hope
– an exploration of the ephemeral and changing nature of existence
Keep in art,
Alice
5 EXHIBITIONS IN AUGUST 2025: CONTEMPORARY ART IN BOLOGNA, PADUA, VENICE, ORISTANO, AND CAVALESE
Nicola Nannini, Oggetto Notte n.1, 2018, olio su tela, 150 x 200 cm. Patrimonio artistico del Gruppo Unipol. Photo Barbara Bicego.
Nicola Nannini
It’s Not Dark Yet
curated by Simona Vinci
The exhibition project is an investigation of landscape, understood not only as a representation of reality, but as a symbolic space in which memories, perceptions, and personal and collective experiences are layered. In this context, the landscape becomes a place of the mind, not a neutral and objective representation but always filtered through subjective perception and the overwriting of time; a meeting point between memory, history, and identity.
Nicola Nannini’s paintings intertwine with unpublished texts by writer Simona Vinci—winner of the 2016 Campiello Prize—giving rise to a multi-voiced narrative in which reality and imagination blend without clear boundaries. (from the press release)
until October 4, 2025
CUBO Unipol, Bologna
Link: https://www.cubounipol.it/it/mostre/nicola-nannini
Endless, Queen Elizabeth, Tecnica mista su tela, 152 x 102 cm
DAMNATIO FIGURAE
From the denial of images to portraits
curated by Marco Trevisan
At the heart of the exhibition is the theme of identity and its perception, the absence and presence of images and their evocative power, and how this influences the ideas we form about others, whether individuals or groups.
“The term ‘damnatio figurae’ refers to a denial of images, a theme that ties in with historical debates not only on iconoclasm, but on the use of visual representations in general,” explains Marco Trevisan. “Riccardo Falcinelli in Visus (2024), for example, discusses how images can be both powerful and problematic, analyzes their role in society, and invites us to reflect on how images of people can be manipulated and the emotional and social impact this creates.” (from the press release)
until October 5, 2025
Fondazione Alberto Peruzzo – Spazio Sant’Agnese, Padua
Link: https://fondazionealbertoperuzzo.it/event/damnatio-figurae-dalla-negazione-dellimmagine-al-ritratto/
Gianmaria Potenza: ELABORATORE 47 | ph. Fondazione Potenza Tamini
Gianmaria Potenza
Elaborating New Codes
curated by Valeria Loddo
In Elaboratori, Gianmaria Potenza addresses the profound cultural transformations introduced by the digital age in the 1980s, a period in which information technology and algorithmic languages redefined the dynamics of communication and representation. Without directly using digital tools, the artist assimilates their structural principles, such as modularity and seriality, transposing them into a visual code that maintains an essential link with manual skill. (from the press release)
until October 17, 2025
Palazzo Ferro Fini (Headquarters of the Regional Council of Veneto), Venice
Link: Mostra monografica a Palazzo ferro Fini
TEE BEE 1985 acrilico e spray su tela, cm150x268
HOPE AROUND
New York graffiti
curated by Fabiola Naldi
Artists on display: Cornbread; Taki 183; Rammellzee; A-One; Kool Koor; Toxic; Futura 2000; Fab 5 Freddy; Lee Quiñones; Coco 144; Blade; Phase 2; Quik; Zephyr; Seen; Daze; Delta 2; Ero; Part One; Sonic; Freedom; Trike One; Duster; Ghost; Crash; TKid 170; Sane Smith; Sharp; Cope 2; Stay High 149; Lava I & II; Duro; Ket; Crime 79; LA 2; Ven; Bill Blast; TeeBee; BG 183; Bio; How & Nosm; Stak & Wolf
In the 1970s and 1980s, graffiti established itself as an independent expression of rebellion and hope: in an urban context often perceived as hostile, the “kids of New York” invaded the streets and subways as active and receptive spaces, reclaiming and reconfiguring places beyond the affirmation of a single identity.
The unquestionably “vandalistic” nature of graffiti remains more than fifty years later, but the time gap can lead to a profound reflection on the choice of individual protagonists to transfer their practice from unauthorized urban spaces to more institutional artistic contexts. This transition raises fundamental questions about the nature of art, the authenticity of expression, and the very meaning of “vandalism” in an era when graffiti writing is accepted as an art form in its own right. (from the press release)
until October 25, 2025
Foro Boario, Oristano
Link: https://dromosfestival.it/hope-around/
Three Acts. Pichler, Zhuka, Marinelli
curated by Elsa Barbieri
This exhibition, spread across the territory—between the spaces of the Museum and along the banks of the Rio Gambis—involves artists of different generations and backgrounds and develops as a language suspended between abstraction and concreteness, inviting the viewer to immerse themselves in a continuous intertwining of vision and movement.
Pichler’s paintings, Zhuka’s photographs, and Marinelli’s sculptures are a call to exist, without compromise, in a daily life full of ambivalence, uncertainty, and oblique paths.
The exhibition is presented as a narrative divided into several acts, each exploring, from a different perspective and using a different expressive key, the ephemeral and changing nature of existence, suspended between the finite and the infinite. (from the press release)
until November 2, 2025
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cavalese
CONTEMPORARY ART AUGUST 2025: SOME EXHIBITIONS ARE CLOSING!
THE SCULPTURE SHOW 2025
until August 3, 2025, at Accesso Galleria, Pietrasanta
Fallen Fruit – Paradise Lost
until August 24, 2025, at Ago Modena Fabbriche Culturali – Palazzina dei Giardini ducali and at the Museo della Figurina, Modena
Present Tense – Arcangelo Sassolino
until August 31, 2025, at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano
Time for Women – Empowering Visions in 20 Years of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women
until August 31, 2025, at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
To discover all the unmissable exhibitions taking place in museums and exhibition halls throughout Italy, read the page dedicated to Exhibitions and Events, with a map to find the event you want to see in your city.
CONTEMPORARY ART AUGUST 2025: SOME EXHIBITIONS CURRENTLY ON!
FRINGE
until September 13, 2025, at LABS contemporary art, Bologna
Graffiti
until September 14, 2025, at Museion, Bolzano
Massinissa Selmani – Loophole
until September 14, 2025, at Galleria Umberto di Marino, Naples
Wangechi Mutu – Poems of Black Earth
until September 14, 2025, at Galleria Borghese, Rome
Still Steel – Christine Liebich
until September 26, 2025, at E3 arte contemporanea, Brescia
SONIA COSTANTINI AND RITA SIRAGUSA – DERIVE CROMATICHE E APPRODI MATERICI
until September 28, 2025, at Fondazione Arsenale, Iseo
Davide Bramante – JOCU FOCU
until October 17, 2025, at Studio La Città, Verona
As always, enjoy the art!
Alice
Post edited by: Alice Traforti
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In this blog, I don't explain the history of art — I tell the stories that art itself tells.