The "Painting Container" arrives in Bologna: a project for a map of contemporary painting

From January 17 to February 28, 2026, Studio Cenacchi Gallery in Bologna is hosting Francesco. Painting Container 3.0. Diptychs, triptychs, but also single works, perhaps..., an exhibition curated by Gabriele Salvaterra that marks the third stage of a traveling exhibition project dedicated to contemporary painting. The opening is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026 at 6 p.m., while on the night of Feb. 7, 2026, the exhibition will be part of the ART CITY White Night program, in conjunction with Arte Fiera.

The project is rooted in the activity carried out between 2014 and 2019 by the Francesco Siracusa Exhibition Space in Agrigento, an experience that, in a context peripheral to the main centers of Italian contemporary art, had given rise to a careful and continuous mapping work on the younger and more experimental research related to painting and, in part, photography. In those years the Agrigento space had hosted several personalities of the new Italian painting, producing critical texts and interviews that today constitute a relevant documentation for understanding that season.

The closure of the Sicilian space interrupted a directrix that connected distant territories, ideally linking the extremes of the peninsula through a constant confrontation on emerging pictorial practices. The Bologna leg of the Painting Container was born as an attempt to reactivate, albeit in a different form, that experience, resuming its spirit of observation, comparison and openness. Hosted by the Galleria Studio Cenacchi, the exhibition is proposed as a moment of restitution and revival, rather than a simple historical reconstruction.

The exhibition includes many of the artists who had already participated in the exhibitions of Spazio Francesco Siracusa, invited to present free contributions, not bound by pre-established themes or directions. After the first two stages of the project, in Ala and Trento, which had seen the entry of new names, the Bologna appointment further expands the group of artists involved, confirming the dynamic and non-crystallized nature of the project. Alongside the artists already present in the previous stages, Andrea Astolfi, Domenico Grenci, Paolo Migliazza and Luca Moscariello are added on this occasion.

The exhibition brings together a total of nearly thirty artists: Andrea Astolfi, Giovanni Blanco, Giuseppe Bombaci, Roberta Cavallari, Pierluca Cetera, Barbara De Vivi, Lorenzo Di Lucido, Simone Geraci, Domenico Grenci, Elisa Grezzani, Federico Lanaro, Andrea Mangione, Paolo Migliazza, Igor Molin, Luca Moscariello, Michele Parisi, Giorgio Pignotti, Ettore Pinelli, Manuel Portioli, Francesco Rinzivillo, Alessandro Saturno, Thomas Scalco, Luca Sclafani, Federico Severino, Tina Sgrò, Nicholas Stedman, Valerio Valino and Giovanni Viola. The works presented traverse figuration, abstraction, sign, construction, relationship with technology, encroachments into sculpture and processes of dematerialization, returning an articulated and non-unique image of contemporary painting. This context also includes the contribution of Valerio Valino, a painter and musician, who participates in the exhibition with a sound painting conceived specifically for the project. His intervention takes the form of Overture for Piano and Bass in B Flat Major (2025), an instrumental composition for piano and bass proposed in looped environmental reproduction.

Bologna takes on a central role in this context. Many of the artists in the exhibition were trained in the city, gravitate there or recognize it as a professional and cultural reference. The same mapping activity carried out by Francesco Siracusa identified in the Bolognese context a privileged point of observation, if not a real school, at least a shared atmosphere capable of affecting the most recent pictorial research. The title Container of Painting refers to a deliberately open and inclusive idea of the medium. Painting, understood in its most diverse declinations, remains at the center of an exhibition device that occupies the wide and articulated spaces of the gallery like a labyrinthine path.

The "Painting Container" arrives in Bologna: a project for a map of contemporary painting

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