Artist Statement
Riccardo Arena is a visual artist, researcher, and teacher. His practice is dedicated to the creation of visual and narrative environments that, combining theoretical and formal research, are conceived as cultural devices of imaginative knowledge.

Exploring heterogeneous disciplinary territories, his work emerges from the intertwining of phenomena and events distant in time and space, woven into a network of correlations that form the basis for complex narratives formalized through multiple languages and expressive modes.

Driven by these tensions, over the years he has developed long-term projects in various countries, whose poetics, and contents are defined by a rhizomatic investigation constructed through travel experiences. These projects, consisting of layers of myths, scientific speculations, geographies, fictitious models, cosmogonies, and mirages of consciousness, open a field of vision where historical frameworks and cultural backgrounds dissolve, favoring an evocative dimension capable of revealing more intimate and universal components.

During this process, the oscillation between rational methodology and intuitive action generates a series of cognitive movements that crystallize into mental diagrams, abstract cartographies, and gestural atlases—tools of orientation that unveil the very substance of the mental laboratory and provide the foundation for the creation of figurative, verbal, and spatial works that constitute the corpus of each project.

Installations, films, visual reflections, narratives, seminars, workshops, and lectures configure an imaginative geography open to horizons in constant reformulation, contamination, and expansion, within the scope of a research endeavor aimed at experimenting with hybrid modes of expression and sharing across various contexts.

After developing projects in China (The Fourfold Tree, 2006–2008), in Argentina (Dual Death Ellero and Visual Ecosystem, 2009–2012), in Russia (Vavilon, 2013–2017), and LuDD! – Topography of Light (2017–2020), based on the eponymous novel written by the artist following a series of journeys through Iran, Armenia, and Ethiopia, since 2022 he has been engaged in the Geranos project. The latter is the result of a research collaboration with Monte Verità, the Eranos Foundation, the Anthropological Museum of Mexico City, and the Warburg Institute in London. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. program at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
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Riccardo Arena (1979) lives and works between Milan and La Spezia. He is currently a visiting professor at the National Film Academy of Amsterdam (AHK) and a Ph.D. candidate at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. His work has been recently exhibited at: ICA - The Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia; MUSEO ELISARION, Locarno; TRIESTE CONTEMPORANEA, Trieste; MONTE VERITÀ, Ascona; GALLERIA MILANO; MATERA EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019; MAMBO, Bologna; IIC Addis Ababa; MERKUROV MUSEUM, Gyumri; MUSEO MAXXI, Rome; IMMA MUSEUM, Dublin; IIC London; CENTRO PECCI, Prato; QUADRIENNALE D’ARTE, Rome; FONDAZIONE SANDRETTO RE REBAUDENGO, Turin; VIAFARINI, Milan; FURLA PRIZE, Palazzo Reale, Milan; MART, Rovereto; MAGA, Gallarate; MUSEO DEL NOVECENTO, Milan; PALAIS DE GLACE, Buenos Aires; 1918 ARTSPACE, Shanghai. He was a finalist for the PREMIO MAXXI 2016, winner of the LONG PLAY National Award - XXIV at MA*GA, and recipient of the First Prize at MANUALMENTE, Villa Panza, Varese. He has conducted workshops, seminars, and readings at: FONDAZIONE FELTRINELLI, Milan; ECOMUSEO DI NIGUARDA, Milan; MATERA EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE 2019; MUSEO MAGA, Gallarate; P.I.A. Persistence Is All, Lecce; AAU - University of Fine Art and Design, Addis Ababa; TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, Yerevan; VIAFARINI/MIBACT, Milan. He has taught at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts.
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