This May - amid the season of major international exhibitions in Italy - the 10 Corso Como Gallery presents a special tribute to Arte Povera master Jannis Kounellis, unveiling a powerful site-specific project in collaboration with Galleria Fumagalli. Within the newly reimagined spaces of 10 Corso Como—once industrial interiors—the powerful and rigorous language of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century takes form. It is an invitation to reflection and silence: the white space of the gallery is transformed into an essential theatre in which the visitor becomes the protagonist.

The dramaturgy is built around a single large-scale installation, created by the Greek artist in 2009, consisting of seventy black coats arranged like stains and traces of the past—a powerful and silent device for introspection. In a present marked by profound political and social upheaval, in which migration, displacement, and the condition of human beings in transit have once again become central to global debate, the work stands as an invitation to pause and look beyond the surface.

Kounellis moved through unconventional artistic venues—churches, garages, ruins, former industrial spaces—bringing exhibition practice beyond museums and galleries toward a public and shared dimension. In the large white space of 10 Corso Como Gallery, the installation unfolds as a dense sequence of coats: objects that preserve both the material and immaterial traces of those who wore them, becoming signs of absence, presence, testimony, and memory. These are not simple garments, but traces of lived lives, bearers of individual and collective stories, symbols of protection, vulnerability, and movement. The coat thus becomes a direct reference to the human being, placed at the centre of the artist’s inquiry, within a grand one-act piece in which life itself takes the stage.

Within the context of 10 Corso Como—a place deeply connected to visual culture, fashion, and the intersection of artistic disciplines—the coat acquires layered meanings. The work invites viewers to suspend judgment and reflect on clothing as a testimony of time: an element rich with cultural references, linked to the literary tradition of Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as to Italian neorealist cinema, an allegory of nomadism and diaspora, and a powerful bearer of social history. In this installation, it becomes stain, cast, body, and shroud, embracing both a sacred and a social dimension.

Jannis Kounellis. Untitled
Curated by Alessio de’ Navasques
10 Corso Como Gallery
13.5 – 16.6.2026
Every day: 10.30am – 7.30pm
Free admission