CABINET OF CURIOSITIES, ACT I PROTEUS

Matthias Bitzer was born in Stuttgart, Germany ( 1975), and he lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

He graduated from Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, Germany in 2004.
His artistic practice combines drawing, sculpture and painting creating experience spaces with strong references to history and intellectuals and a deep reflection on their identity, in which the viewer can immerse himself. The development of his work shows itself in the increasing complexity of the installations, maintaining their focus on the construction of memory and the reconstruction of reality. His research involves literary personalities, writers and their characters who have frequently slipped into outsider positions. Fascinated by the relation between the invisible and the real, Bitzer layers symbolic fragments and fractured forms on top of one another as citations. In a new inspection of classical modern art from today’s perspective, the artist combines portraits and geometric constructions in his drawings, paintings and sculptures. Through the analysis of this multiplicity of figures, Matthias Bitzer’s work investigates different looks on reality and through his more and more complex abstract patterns he gives the viewer a visual translation to this fragmentary dimension, to these different points of view, to possible gazes. Through paintings, sculptures and mural drawings, all strictly connected to each other, he thinks the exhibition space as an autonomous body, where you can “consider the works as a kind of symbolist translation or a decoding of reality that tries to make visible something that was invisible before” as the artist says.

His works are part of Public collections at LACMA, Los Angeles, USA, MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany, Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany, Geraer Sammlung, Gera, Germany, CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, and Rosenblum Collection & Friends, Paris, France.

Sheila Hicks was born in Hastings, Nebraska, United States (1934), and she lives and works in Paris, France.

Sheila Hicks graduated with a BFA and MFA from Yale University. She was one of just three women to receive a bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of Art in 1957. In May 2019 the artist received an honorary degree from Yale University. She lives and works in Paris, France. Hicks participated in the 57th Venice Biennale, curated by Christine Macel (2017); the 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016); Glasgow International (2016); Weaving & We, Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art (2016); Whitney Biennial (2014); and São Paulo Biennial (2012).

The artist was awarded the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal in 2010 and was granted an Honorary Doctorate from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 2014.
Recent solo presentations include the major retrospective Sheila Hicks, a little bit of a lot of things, LOK, Kunstmuseum of St. Gallen (2023), SHEILA HICKS: OFF GRID, The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield (2022), Thread, trees, river, MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Wien (2020); Campo Abierto (Open Field), The Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2019); Seize, Weave Space, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2019); Reencuentro, Museo Chileno de arte Precolombino, Santiago (2019); Lignes de Vie, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018); Free Threads, Textile and its Pre-Columbian Roots, 1954-2017, Museo Amparo, Puebla (2017); Sheila Hicks: Apprentissages, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musée Carnavalet and Nanterre-Amandiers, Paris (2016); Sheila Hicks: Material Voices, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (2016); Sheila Hicks | Why Not, TextielMuseum, Tilburg (2016); Foray into Chromatic Zones, Hayward Gallery, London (2015); Sheila Hicks – Hors Normes, Sculptures Textiles, Passage de Retz, Paris, France (2010); Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor, Bard Graduate Centre for Studies in Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, New York (2006).
Hicks has created monumental site-specific works for the Ford Foundation Headquarters and Federal Courthouse in New York; The Duke Endowment in Charlotte, North Carolina; King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Hicks has also produced installations for the Grande Rotonde at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2014-15) and as part of the outdoor exhibition Voyage d’hiver in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles (2017).
Hicks’ work is featured in a number of prominent collections including Tate Gallery, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery, Washington D.C; Art Institute of Chicago; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; The Jewish Museum, New York; and the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska.

Ambra Castagnetti was born in Genoa, Italy (1993), and she lives and works in Milan, Italy.

After earning a degree in Anthropology, she completed a Master’s in Visual Arts at NABA (Milan). She is a visual artist who works with sculpture, video, and installation.

Through various mediums such as sculpture, painting, installation, and video, Ambra Castagnetti explores the complex relationships between the body and the physical and political environment, offering a perspective that is never without an implicit critique. The evocative power of images helps to penetrate the complex relationship between the poetic and the political, between reality and fiction, creating a fluid imaginary. Her attraction to the body is always accompanied by a broader fascination with living beings, where the animal, the mountain, the water, the desert, the earth, and the sky are all invited to participate in a unified narrative rich in intimacy.

In her work, Castagnetti seeks to dissipate and free the feelings of discomfort that arise when confronting daily life. Focused on natural, feminine, and animal forms, the artist reshapes her feelings toward reality: body and mind, and the relationship between the two, become central elements. Ceramic and metal protect a soft and fragile material, otherwise destined to dissolve and become unrecognizable in its reflection.

Selected recent shows and projects: Mambo Bogotà, Colombia (2025), Francesca Minini, Milan (2025), Complesso Eni del Gazometro Ostiense, Roma (2024), Palazzo Braschi, Roma (2023), Fondazione Pini, Milano (2023), New Galerie, Paris (2023), Francesca Minini, Milano (2022), La Biennale di Venezia, Venezia (2022), Manifattura Tabacchi, Firenze (2021), Eastcontemporary, Entrevaux (2021), Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2021), Mana Contemporary, New York (2020), Art Drive In, Brescia (2020), Casa Testori, Milano (2019), Villa Necchi, Milano (2019).  In 2020 she joined the residency programmes in Palazzo Monti, Brescia and Manifattura Tabacchi, Florence.

Performances include: Kompostovnik (2022-present), Live musicals such as, There is nothing darker than the sun when your eyes are closed (2025) part of the Supernature project.

Elena Damiani was born in 1979 in Lima, Peru, where she currently lives and works.

Damiani has participated in multiple international biennales, including the Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2023), Cuenca Biennial (2018, 2016), Gwangju Biennale (2016), Venice Biennale, Vienna Biennale and IV Poly/Graphic Triennial (all 2015), Bienal de la Imagen y Movimiento (2014), Mercosul Biennial (2013).

Solo exhibitions include Francesca Minini, Milan (2025); MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Lima (2022), Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (2017), Museo Amparo, Puebla (2016), MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2015). Her work has been exhibited at the MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, Heide MoMA, Melbourne and ! MACO Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (all in 2023), C3A, Cordoba and Museo de Arte Zapopan, Guadalajara (both 2022), Harn Museum of Art, Florida and A4 Art Museum, Chengdu (both 2021), Dhaka Art Summit, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago and MOCO Montpellier Contemporain (all in 2020), Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon and Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Roma (both 2019), Skissernas Museum, Lund, (2017), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and MOCAD Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (both 2015). She was awarded the Grants & Commissions Program, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO (2016) and the commission for the David Rockefeller Atrium, Americas Society, New York (2014).

Her work is represented in the collections of MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, New York; MALI Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Miami; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco and Paris, Cisneros Fontanals ArtFoundation, Miami; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunisi; Schoepflin Foundation, Lorrach and FOLAFototeca Latinoamericana, Buenos Aires.