The new chapter of the exhibition “Transitum”, Fabrizio Cotognini – Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, Milan

The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum and BUILDING present the new chapter of Transitum, solo exhibition by artist Fabrizio Cotognini curated by Marina Dacci, which takes shape in the rooms of the house-museum from June 20th to September 14th, 2025.

The exhibition, part of a project spread across three venues in the city of Milan – BUILDING GALLERY, Gallery Moshe Tabibnia and Bagatti Valsecchi Museum – finds a particularly evocative chapter in the house-museum in Via Gesù – 13 artworks by Cotognini are interwoven with the neo-Renaissance collection of the historic home, creating a dense dialogue of visual and conceptual references. The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum interprets Transitum‘s language, offering an unprecedented perspective that is intimately consistent with the artist’s poetics.

In particular, the exhibition features 12 bronze microcastings, titled Hybridatio Mundi (2024-2025), depicting small birds. Made with remarkable technical skill and imbued with symbolic meaning, these works refer to the recurring themes of transformation and metamorphosis recalling the already on view exhibitions at BUILDING GALLERY (on view until July 19th, 2025) and Gallery Moshe Tabibnia (on view until July 5th, 2025).
To further enrich the exhibition itinerary an artist’s book, titled How to Explain to Birds that the Sun Belongs to Everyone (2020) is presented. This work offers insight into Cotognini’s working method, in which images and written annotations are seamlessly interwoven, giving visitors an immersive and intimate experience of his creative process.

As curator Marina Dacci notes, “Birds are symbols of absolute freedom of the thought, imagination, and rapid relationship with the spirit. Linked to the element air, they are considered messengers between earth and sky, transcending traditional concepts of space and time. In many cultures, they appear in creation myths as divine beings facilitating important cultural, scientific and technical inventions, in a perspective of continuous transformation. In alchemy, birds are the active forces: ascending, they lead back to sublimation; descending, to condensation, the two symbols united in the same figure indicate distillation.
Fabrizio Cotognini’s two-headed bird is the guiding image of the Transitum exhibition project at BUILDING gallery. These winged guests (whether embodied in microcastings or drawn on paper) accompany the visitor throughout each exhibition floor of the show.
After visiting the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, it felt natural to symbolically open wide the gallery’s windows and let a small flock migrate to this noble and visionary neo-Renaissance mansion, capable of generating a bridge between five centuries thanks to its extraordinary collections of paintings, furniture and applied art artifacts. Cotognini’s microfusions are harmoniously placed in a few rooms, selected to trigger a silent and evocative dialogue between the artist’s flights, the rooms of the house-museum and the works that constitute its core identity.
The focus of this encounter is the Historical Library, an authentic Wunderkammer where – among Renaissance mirabilia and scientific instruments – the artist’s book How to Explain to Birds that the Sun Belongs to Everyone rests on the large fifteenth century wooden table, as a poetic relic dedicated to the flight of birds.
Eight other rooms of the Museum will be populated by the microfusions: both in the representative rooms, such as the Dining Room and the Weapons Gallery, and in the more intimate spaces of the private apartments of brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi. In this path, the visitors will be called to carefully observe and discover Cotognini’s contemporary intrusions in an itinerary that combines surprise and contemplation.”

The exhibition project Transitum is accompanied by the publication of the exhibition catalogue, published by BUILDING. The volume includes four critical texts signed by curator Marina Dacci, journalist and author Silvia Bottani, architect and IUAV university lecturer Agostino De Rosa, and lecturer and researcher Tommaso Ghezzani, along with complete photographic documentation of the three exhibition venues.