Corals, a new adventure for Hub/Art

On 7 June 2023, Hub/Art has kicked off a new adventure, playing a leading role in the management of a new space dedicated to creative disciplines in Milan.

Corals , the name of the space, located at number 21 Via Torricelli, Navigli area has opened with the art exhibition entitled Self (Portrait). Double Look at Woman, dedicated to the work of artists Giuseppe Calcagnile and Alissa Marchenko and curated by Greta Zuccali.

The Hub/Art team is happy to share its experience by taking on the artistic direction and communication activities, both online and offline, to ensure that the project evolves and becomes a point of reference in the Milanese panorama of non-profit spaces.

Corals, the name chosen for the space, has a double meaning clearly inspired by the fascinating organisms that populate the sea.

Corals, in fact, with their multicoloured colours and the fundamental role they play in the marine system, guarantee fish a habitat with the greatest biodiversity in the world as well as a fertile breeding ground.

Inspired precisely by the primordial function of coral, the space therefore opens with the desire to offer young artists an environment in which they can grow and make new connections, laying the first foundations of their artistic careers.

The exhibition space is also inspired by another characteristic of corals, namely that they are one of the world’s longest-living animal species, and in this, scaramanticamente, it recognises its ambition to grow itself in the city of Milan and expand to create an artistic coral reef.

The space is located next to the Naviglio Pavese, a stop on the Romolo green line, in a cultural district with universities and art and design academies such as IULM, NABA, Domus Academy and Bocconi.

A barrier-free space that is the brainchild of Lorenzo Negri, a product designer who will share the exhibition area with his own laboratory, where he works on 3D printing and manual fabrication of commercial prototypes.

For the inaugural exhibition, a special exhibition project was chosen, combining the work of an artist active in the second half of the 20th century, Giuseppe Calcagnile, with the work of a young Ukrainian artist currently living in Milan, Alissa Marchenko.

The observation of women is the central theme of the exhibition.

On the one hand, we have a selection of Calcagnile’s drawings and watercolours, made between the 1960s and 1970s, depicting the female figure, sometimes in colour, sometimes in black and white. Work that with extreme simplicity and compositional clarity gives life to the subject, makes it alive and present, so much so that it establishes a conversation with the observer.

In dialogue, the work of Alissa Marchenko, an artist who naturally suggests a way of seeing femininity as a complex emotional structure full of contradictions, difficult to understand and describe, even more difficult to deal with.

The threads as a sculptural element in space correspond to the three-channel video performance installation presenting separate parts of the artist’s body. The performance presents the female body without emphasising the erotic aspect, focusing instead on the emotional one.

The exhibition opened on 7 June 2023, from 6.30 p.m. to 9 p.m., with the presence of the artist Alissa Marchenko and Pierluigi Piscopo, nephew of the artist Giuseppe Calcagnile, who with this first exhibition wants to start a path of rediscovery of the artistic work of his uncle, who died in 1999.

The works of artist Alissa Marchenko are made available for the exhibition thanks to the collaboration of the Bianchi Zardin Contemporary Art gallery.