ART BRUSSELS 2025 

Constructing Images – Deconstructing Alphabets

Vincenzo Agnetti – Tomaso Binga – Alighiero Boetti – Simona Weller 

The booth at Art Brussels 2025 will present a thought-provoking exploration of how four seminal artists—Vincenzo Agnetti, Tomaso Binga, Simona Weller, and Alighiero Boetti—have engaged with language and words as artistic tools to deconstruct traditional semiotic processes and communication systems. Through their work, these artists have created new forms of expression that exist in the liminal space between language and image, contributing to a broader dialogue that has its roots in the early avant-garde movements of the 20th century and extends into contemporary art.

This exhibition reflects on the symbiotic relationship between language and image, as well as the poetic dimensions that emerge from this interplay. It finds fertile ground in the experimental practices of the 1960s and 1970s, a period marked by radical artistic innovation. These decades were characterized by the use of extra-artistic materials and new technologies, which allowed artists to explore novel expressive languages and redefine the boundaries of artistic creation.

Among these innovations was the typewriter, a tool that became central to the practices of many artists of the time. Tomaso Binga, for instance, used an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter to create his Dattilocodici(Typecodes), transforming accidental keystroke errors into cryptic linguistic codes that blurred the line between language and visual art.

Vincenzo Agnetti explored a parallel path of experimentation. His 1968 work La macchina drogata (The Drugged Machine), exhibited at Milan’s Cenobio-Visualità Gallery, repurposed an Olivetti Divisumma 14 electromechanical calculator by replacing its numbers with letters and symbols. Visitors were invited to interact with this machine, producing collaborative performances that Agnetti described as "static theatre" His reflections on language, consumer society, and the demystification of information resonate with contemporary concerns around the relationship between humans and machines.

Alongside these two figures, the booth will feature works by Simona Weller and Alighiero Boetti, further enriching the exploration of language as image and image as language. Weller’s practice, deeply rooted in feminist artistic discourse, connects to a broader historical moment of rediscovery and recognition of female artists, while Boetti's celebrated approach to language and coding systems complements the overarching theme of semiotic construction and deconstruction.

This exhibition continues the gallery's commitment to comparing and contextualizing the works of these artists, a process investigated trough gallery exhibitions such as Fare uno, dalla parola al segno un dialogo possibile (Making one, from the word to the sign—a possible dialogue) in 2023 and Una macchina è una macchina (A machine is a machine) in 2024. At Art Brussels 2025, this stand will offer a unique opportunity to revisit the radical innovations of the 1960s and 1970s while prompting contemporary reflections on the intersection of language, image, and technology in art. Through the works of Agnetti, Binga, Weller, and Boetti, visitors are invited to engage with a dialogue that challenges conventional modes of communication and points toward the evolving future of artistic expression.

Vincenzo Agnetti (Milan 1926 – 1981), artist, writer, poet, protagonist of Italian Conceptual Art. A graduate of the Brera Academy, he made his debut in the late 1950s, combining painting in the informal sphere with his work as a critic, essayist and theoretician. In 1957 he collaborated with "Azimuth" and the magazine of the same name. From 1960 onwards he radicalised the conceptual scope of his work, moving away from painting and identifying art with absence and with a radical analytical practice, aimed at the pure examination of concepts. In 1967 he had his first solo exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, where he exhibited Principia, a work based on the relativity of meanings in language. The following year he presented the famous Macchina Drogata, an Olivetti Divisumma 14 calculator whose numbers were replaced by letters of the alphabet, so that words became the result of mathematical operations. His work of analysis of the object in relation to its physical and mental image, as well as his work on the languages of communication, will be, even in later years, of fundamental importance. Among the exhibitions and reviews in which he has participated, we remember: numerous editions of the Venice Biennale (1974, 1976, 1978, 1980); Documenta 5, (1972); the Rome Quadrennial (1972); the S. Paolo Biennial (1973); Vincenzo Agnetti. Retrospective (1967-1980), Mart di Rovereto (2008); Vincenzo Agnetti. L'operAzione Concettuale, Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea, Foligno (2012); About Vincenzo Agnetti, Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art, Genoa (2013); Vincenzo Agnetti. Works from Private Collections, Matteo Lampertico Arte Antica e Moderna, Milan (2014); Testimonianza, Galleria Il Ponte, Florence (2015); Vincenzo Agnetti, Palazzo Serbelloni, Milan (2016); Vincenzo Agnetti - The Lost Letter, Agnetti Archive, Milan (2016); Giorgio Morandi/Vincenzo Agnetti, Difference and Repetition, Palazzo De Sanctis, Teramo (2016); Agnetti. A hundred years from now, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2017); Vincenzo Agnetti. Oltre il linguaggio, Osart Gallery, Milan (2017); Unfinished culture #2, Brodbeck Foundation, Catania (2017); Equivalence - Meditation, Vincenzo Agnetti Archive, Milan (2017); Vincenzo Agnetti: Territories, Lévy Gorvy, London/New York (2017); Only. Vincenzo Agnetti, Museo del Novecento, Florence (2019); Vincenzo Agnetti. NEG: suonare le pause, Padiglione de l'Esprit Nouveau, Bologna (2019); Vincenzo Agnetti, GAM, Turin (2022); Tempo e Memoria, Galleria Cardi, Milan/London (2023); 'Practically nothing to sell', MAMbo, Bologna (2024); Vincenzo Agnetti and Tommaso Binga: a machine is a machine, Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome (2024).

Tomaso Binga (Salerno 1931), the art name of Bianca Pucciarelli Menna, artist, poet, and performer, lives and works in Rome. In 1971 Binga began an artistic and poetic experimentation centered on verbal-visual writing. In the first phase of her career, she worked with "desemantized" writing, an apparently dysfunctional and non-communicative graphic sign, presenting his first exhibition in 1974 at the L'Obelisco Gallery in Rome. In 1974 he began his performative actions: the first is Parole da distruggere, parole da conservare. (Words to be destroyed, words to be preserved). The following years will be full of cultural activities and significant exhibitions: in 1976 she will complete a series of works that will remain a cornerstone of his artistic research, such as her "Scrittura Vivente": letters of the alphabet formed with her own female body and in particular her famous wallpapers. In that year she was invited to participate in the exhibition organized by Mirella Bentivoglio entitled “Tra linguaggio e immagine” ("Between language and image") followed by “Materializzazione del linguaggio” ("Materialization of language") (1978). She continued her activity by participating in numerous exhibitions and cultural initiatives including the XVI Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil (1981) XI Quadrennial of Rome (1986), Wunderkammer, Rome, (2011), Fondazione Prada (2017), Frigoriferi Milanese (2019), Museion, Bolzano (2019), Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva (2020). Lastly, the 2022 edition of the Venice Biennale. Her works are also present in Italian and foreign museum collections.

Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) was born in Turin on 16 December 1940. He began making abstract paintings and drawings from the early 1960s. Subsequently he begins to experiment with materials such as masonite, plexiglas and luminous elements. His first personal exhibition dates back to 1967 at the Christian Stein Gallery in Turin. On this occasion, he presents various works made with non-artistic and industrial materials, such as eternit, iron, wood and camouflage fabric. At the beginning of the 1970s, the "Map" project began, in which he depicted the world map with the individual nations woven with the colors of their respective flags. Also in that period, precisely in 1972, his works take a conceptual turn: the artist changes his name to "Alighiero e Boetti", undermining his identity with the concept of double. In 1985 he returned to Japan, where he exhibited in 1980, and right here he created some works using rice paper. In these years he made reproductions of magazines and newspapers through the use of the pen ("Biro"). in 1989 he created the scenes and flocks for the show "Hanjo" by Vita Accardi. On April 24, 1994, Alighiero Boetti died in his home in via del Teatro Pace in Rome.

Simona Weller (Rome 1940) lives and works in Calcata (VT). After long-term study stays in the East ( as far as Bangkok and Cairo), she graduated from the Rome Academy of Fine Arts. In 1973 she gained critical attention at the 10th Quadrennial in Rome, by exhibiting large abstract canvases where painting is mixed with letters and writing. During the 1970s, she participated in the Quadriennale in Rome, the Venice Biennale (1978 - Materializzazione del linguaggio curated by Mirella Bentivoglio), the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil and in the International Kunstlerinnen in Berlin. A multifaceted artist, she has always flanked her work as a painter (and later also as a ceramist) with that of a writer in a path of research and historical reconstruction on the presence of women in art: in 1976 she published a book investigation on the importance of women's contributions to contemporary art 'Il Complesso di Michelangelo', and an essay on female creativity 'Il Privato come politica'( the Private as politics). In 1981 she took part in a series of exhibitions, curated by Cesare Vivaldi. On this occasion, Weller exhibits the work ‘Discussion on Method’: titling the entire series and the catalogue. In the 1980s and 1990s, as her artistic success grows internationally (she took part in several group exhibitions in Europe and China), she also increased her literary production. She wrote articles, studies, short stories: from 1980 to 1993, she edited an art column in the monthly magazine ‘Noi Donne’, in 1988 a monographic issue of the magazine ‘Minerva’ on women in art from the Middle Ages to the present day; in 1994 she published the long story ‘Il Pantano del Diavolo’ (The Devil's Pantano). 1998 saw the publication of the first fictional biography of a great artist: Ritratto di Angelica ( Portrait of Angelica), dedicated to the Swiss painter Angelica Kauffmann (Avagliano Ed., has been translated in Austria and Germany ). In 2000 and 2002 followed, (Avagliano ed.) ‘Una Rosa nel cuore’ and ‘Suzanne’, both dedicated to the adventurous life of Suzanne Valadon. Finally, in 2015, the story of futurist painter Benedetta Cappa, narrated in Marinetti Amore Mio (Marlin Ed.). In 2018, she participated in the exhibition ‘Magma il corpo e la parola nell'arte delle donne tra l'Italia e la Lituania dal 1965 ad oggi’ at the Istituto Centrale della grafica in Rome, curated by Benedetta Carpi de Resmini. In 2019, she is also took part in the exhibition ‘Il Soggetto imprevisto, 1978 Arte e Femminismo in Italia’ curated by Raffaella Perla at the Frigoriferi Milanesi( Milan); In 2022, she participated in the exhibition ‘Ri-materializzazione del Linguaggio’ ( ‘Re-materialisation of the language’: re-edition of the project for the 1978 Biennale) at the Fondazione Antonio Dalle Nogare in Bolzano, with the work ‘Diario al muro’. In 2023 she took part in the group exhibitions: ‘Il segno è l'esemplare parlato’, Galleria Sara Zanin project, Rome; ‘Fare Uno. Dalla parola al Segno un dialogo possibile', Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome. In July 2023 the Merini Hall of the Galleria Nazionale d’arte Moderna in Rome, hosts the exhibit of the 1978 work ‘Diario al muro’. In October 2023 Galleria Erica Ravenna presented Weller’s solo show ‘Frammenti di un discorso sul metodo’ (‘Fragments of a discussion on Method’) and her work is displayed by the gallery at miart 2024. In 2024, three works by the artist became part of the collection of the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome, and were presented in the exhibition ‘ACQUISIZIONI’, which opened in December of the same year.