MATtam 88
Manto Arte Temporanea | Temporary Art Manto
short exhibitions in found spaces
Sala Attilio Regolo del Giardino Segreto | Palazzo Te | Mantua
Pia Gazzola
Drawing the time
Sunday June 21st 2026
only between 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM
Drawing time
from the messages carried in flight by carrier pigeons
to the suspended moments inside and outside books
to the close-knit double pages
to the stone pages opened in the time of fossils
to the writings of leaves moved by the air
other writings of time,
that moved by the hand of a clock
and drawn by the weight of the shadow
Pia Gazzola was born in Negrar di Valpolicella – Verona – on June 4, 1945. After schooling in Milan, higher education at ICART in Paris, and qualifying at the Central Institute for Restoration in Rome, in 1974 she moved to Vienna where she resided for thirty years, working as an expert at the laboratories of the Austrian Federal Monuments Institute.This experience deeply influenced her artistic journey, which started in 1986 when she decided to "break her silence" and create her own works. Her poetics is closely related to the themes of the silent expressive form of nature, traces, signs, and the exploration of different "qualities of time". Integral to her work and artistic research are the artists' book, installations, photography, and experimental projects. In 1999 she began a project called "Capire al Volo" involving teams of homing pigeons, which explored the theme of the perception of time and distance in relation to digital media. Over the course of three years the wide-ranging project included exhibitions, installations, and performances at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin, the Academy University of Applied Art in Vienna, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bonn, and the contemporary art collection of the Certosa di Padula in the province of Salerno. In 2004 Pia returned to Italy and settled permanently in the countryside in Valpolicella. From 2005 to 2014 she taught in Italy at the Accademia d'Arte Cignaroli in Verona, of which she was appointed a member, and as visiting lecturer at Cooper Union University and New York University for the Advanced Architecture Laboratory. From 2014 to 2019 she gave lectures and workshops on the theme "The language of shadow: transfers and transformation" at the Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid and the Palacio de Cristal, an exhibition space of the Reina Sofia Museum. At the Ivorypress gallery in Madrid, she exhibited the project "segni di segni", which became part of the Artists' Books Collection of Elena and Norman Foster. She has also published a photo book on the treatment of culture in the city, "Romeo e Giulietta la tragedia di Verona", and exhibited the project "Sorvolo" at the Galleria la Città in Verona. In 2022 the Natural History Museum of Verona hosted two exhibitions of her projects: "segni di segni" and "pagine fossili". Her works are found in various collections in Italy and abroad..
"Every experience risks being lost and vanishing if the imperceptible alliance between forms and their shadows is not made visible." Donata Negrini
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