Alice Cattaneo

Alice Cattaneo (Milan, 1976). In 1998, she enrolled in the Environmental Art course at the Glasgow School of Art. Here, thanks to dialogue with the artist-professors, she explored the idea of art as a relational project in public space. She then moved on to a practice that expresses itself through the relationship between materials and the exhibition context.

She exhibited her early work in Glasgow, in independent spaces run by artists, and her first studio was located in a complex of artists’ studios near the River Clyde. In 2004, she earned an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. She studied with American artists and theorists close to Minimal, Performance, and Conceptual Art, who encouraged her to seek her own poetics combined with a practice that evolves through processual methods. The following years saw her involved in her first institutional exhibitions in Italy and abroad, for which she created complex, impermanent sculptures in space using very simple materials. In this way, she refined the relationship between sculpture and the scenography of the exhibition space. Focusing on the inherent characteristics of materials and seeking consistency with the image that gives origin to the work, her recent sculptures are created in collaboration with artisans and craftsmen linked to the places where the artist works. For solo exhibitions, he collaborated with the Suzy Shammah Gallery in 2005, the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham (exhibition curated by Jonathan Watkins) in 2007, the MADRE museum in Naples in 2008, the Galerie Stadtpark in Krems (exhibition with Fred Sandback, curated by David Komary) in 2012, with the Museo del Novecento in Milan (exhibition Mettere un mare nella nebbia curated by Iolanda Ratti) in 2018, with the Marie-Laure Fleisch gallery in Brussels (exhibition The Image in the Hand, curated by Chiara Bertola) and with the Archaeological Museum of Acqui Terme in 2019, on the occasion of Una Boccata d’Arte (exhibition Affioramenti) in 2021, with the Casamadre Arte Contemporanea Gallery in Naples in 2023 and with the GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin with the exhibition Dove lo spazio chiama il segno curated by Giovanni Giacomo Paolin in 2025.

She has participated in group exhibitions at various institutions, including: MAXXI in Rome; Villa delle Rose in Bologna for the 2007 Furla Prize, where she received a special mention from Mona Hatoum; Palazzo Grassi in Venice for Italics, Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution, curated by Francesco Bonami in 2008; the Musée d’Art Moderne in Saint-Etienne in 2009; the Today Art Museum in Beijing, the Fondazione Stelline in Milan curated by Giorgio Verzotti, the Hangar Bicocca in Milan for Terre Vulnerabili curated by Chiara Bertola with Andrea Lissoni, and the Museo Pecci in Prato in 2010; the Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia for Arte Essenziale, based on an idea by Federico Ferrari in 2011; the Guangdong Museum of Art for The Unseen, The Fourth Guangzhou Triennial in 2012; MAMbo in Bologna, curated by Francesca Pasini in 2013; Castello di Rivoli, curated by Marcella Beccaria in 2014; ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe for Negative Space – Trajectories of Sculpture in 2019; Villa Olmo in Como in the exhibition Astratte, Donne e astrazione in Italia 1930 – 2000, curated by Elena Di Raddo in 2022; the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi for Parallel Cities, curated by Andrea Anastasio, in 2024. She participated in several residency programs such as Fragmented City at the Ratti Foundation in Como with artist Marjetica Potrč in 2006. She then spent a period in residence at ISCP in New York thanks to the 2009 New York Prize, promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute and Columbia University, and in 2020 she was a guest of AIR Artist in Residence in Krems, on the banks of the Danube.