Per filo e per segno – 1/12. Numero Cromatico

From January 15 to February 11, 2026, BUILDING BOX presents the first installation of the exhibition project Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia: Frontiera del mio amore (2025) by Numero Cromatico. The artistic collective and multidisciplinary research center founded in Rome in 2011 develops a synaesthetic relationship with textile through the simultaneous activation of sensory and cognitive registers.

The work at the center of the BUILDING BOX installation is part of a series of 24 wool tapestries. Each one features a love poem created using I.L.Y. (I Love You), one of the artificial intelligences developed by the collective (the other two concern epitaphs and futurology), which has been trained with poems from different centuries. The result of this process, not without irony and transgression, is to question the creative process, but also hermeneutics understood as the experience of understanding. For the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), understanding is an event that occurs in the encounter between interpreter and work. Tu sei il segno, la vera frontiera del mio amore. Creazione del mio mondo, della mia poesia, is the text chosen for BUILDING BOX, which stands out against a black and green background, its verses inviting multiple interpretations on love, interpersonal relationships, and thresholds. But, on closer inspection, they are nothing more than the weaves and intertwining of a fabric that is determined by both tactile and mental aspects.

After all, throughout history, textiles have always conveyed coded meanings and transmitted religious, social, or spiritual values. Numero Cromatico integrates these components into its investigation by means of an algorithm that becomes an active tool of appropriation, overturning the common view that artificial intelligence replaces the individual, who is deprived of the process of knowledge. The methodology proposed by the Roman artistic collective goes in the opposite direction and aims to develop a structured dialogue where AI is not a dogma, but rather a tool for analyzing and questioning codes. The tapestry, in the setting proposed for BUILDING BOX, appears partially hidden by colored curtains that transform the window into a hypothetical street theater. Not only does the space change, but the work takes on a mysterious, almost unfathomable aspect, recovering a secret, even magical plot that is closest to the spirit of Numero Cromatico. In this case, the artistic creation cannot be captured by a furtive and distracted glance from the public, but requires concentration and commitment, especially for those who wish to decipher a hermetic message that tests our intelligence, which is anything but artificial.

_________

From January 15th 2026 to January 6th, 2027, BUILDING BOX presents Per filo e per segno. Percorsi di arte tessile in Italia, an exhibition project curated by Alberto Fiz involving twelve Italian artists from different generations, invited to reflect on the theme of contemporary textiles. Throughout 2026, the exhibition will offer a selection of tapestries, clothing, installations, sculptures and site-specific works in twelve individual monthly installations. The first three artists presented are: Numero Cromatico (artistic collective founded in Rome, 2011), Paola Anziché (Milan, 1975) and Maurizio Donzelli (Brescia, 1958).

The last decade has been characterised by an increasing focus on textile art, which has established itself as one of the most vital languages of contemporary art. The reasons for this can be found, first and foremost, in its ability to restore a central role to the matter and the body in an era dominated by digital technology. Although the use of textiles is nothing new – just think of the fabrics of Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), the carpets of Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) or the tapestries of Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) what has emerged is an unbiased, often provocative and transgressive process that has involved contemporary artists and, at the same time, has made it possible to highlight some central figures in art history, especially women, who have long been marginalised.
Furthermore, the uniqueness of textiles lies in how they have given rise to an autonomous language, with its own expressive matrix understood as a critical device capable of questioning all forms of hierarchy, according to a renewed awareness that can be traced back to the 2017 Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel, who had built her reflection starting precisely from textile art.

The exhibition project presented by BUILDING BOX aims to connect Italian artists from different generations by developing a fluid, all-encompassing journey that highlights the potential of a versatile, malleable and environmentally sustainable material, where tradition, memory and modernity intersect without rigid formalisation. At the same time, fibers, textures, knots and weaves become relational tools capable of redefining space and the relationship between individuals.

Per filo e per segno aims to make an innovative contribution to the debate on textile art, which on this occasion develops around different perspectives, offering a broader vision with the inclusion of a variety of works such as tapestries, clothing, installations, sculptures and site-specific works, many of which are new projects created specifically for this occasion, confirming how fabric is not only a technique but also an innovative approach to reality and image. Beyond the poetic and stylistic prerogatives, there is a unifying feature that can be traced throughout the exhibition, namely the intimate, in some ways autobiographical, aspect of the research, which is not without attention to the manual component, radically opposing the standardisation and dematerialisation of contemporary society. Per filo e per segno therefore aims to be a meticulous and detailed journey that contemplates the minimal unity of the textiles and the pattern that emerges when the threads are woven together. All this with the aim of generating a new plot through twelve chapters.