La mostra Corpi, cieli, e altre visioni: Itinerario negli anni 80 prende avvio dagli anni Ottanta, momento di svolta nella ricerca di Zaza, in cui il suo lavoro si apre a una dimensione più espansa e visionaria, mantenendo però una costante tensione tra terra e cielo, realtà e immaginazione.
Starting April 30, 2026, the new solo exhibition by Michele Zaza will be open to the public at the historic ABC-ARTE gallery in Genoa: Corpi, cieli e altre visioni: Itinerario negli anni 80.This is the third chapter in a series the gallery has dedicated to the artist, curated by Flaminio Gualdoni, following Absolute Traveler (2022) and Arborescent Space (2024).
The exhibition begins in the 1980s, a turning point in Zaza’s artistic research, when his work opens up to a more expansive and visionary dimension, while maintaining a constant tension between earth and sky, reality and imagination.
Trained at the Brera Academy under Marino Marini, Zaza developed from the early 1970s a reflection on the relationship between the individual and systems of power, already evident in the cycles Christology (1972) and Unknown Dissidence (1973). In the second half of the decade, his research focused on the human condition through photographic sequences and constructed actions, often involving family members transformed into symbolic figures. Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, his work progressively opened to a more imaginative dimension: domestic spaces became mental environments, traversed by suspended images as in Anamnesis, Foreign Universe, and Celestial Tale.
It is precisely in the 1980s, as Flaminio Gualdoni observes, that several crucial shifts emerge in Zaza’s work, starting with a transformation of the setting, which expands beyond the photographic image and implies fantastical transitions, bordering on the dreamlike. The role of the depicted figures also changes: no longer the reassuring yet estranged figures of his domestic mythology, but a more decisive subjectivization—the artist himself enters the scene in a kind of raw projection that speaks of maturity and its new ghosts.
During these years, Zaza also consolidated his international presence, with invitations in 1975 to the Paris Biennale, in 1977 to the 14th São Paulo Biennial, and to the 1980 Venice Biennale with a solo room. The following year he was in Paris, where he held a solo exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and participated in Documenta (1977 and 1982), becoming firmly established in the European debate on photography and conceptual practices.
His work was presented by major galleries and key figures on the international scene, including Ugo Ferranti in Rome, Lucio Amelio in Naples, Yvon Lambert in Paris, and Leo Castelli in New York, with whom he realized the exhibition Neo-terrestrial in 1980, a decisive moment in his international recognition.
A major retrospective was dedicated to him in 2014–2015 at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and his research was further explored in a monographic volume presented by Germano Celant at the Centre Pompidou.
Zaza’s works are now held in numerous international public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Hamburger Bahnhof, Walker Art Center, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Tate Modern, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Kunsthaus Zürich, Fondation Emanuel Hoffmann, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, among many other important institutions.
Corpi, cieli e altre visioni: Itinerario negli anni 80 will be on view from April 30 to June 6, 2026 at ABC-ARTE, via XX Settembre 11 A, Genoa.
