Nuova Mixage Up: An Installation for the Zeri Library at ART CITY Bologna 2025

On Wednesday, January 15, at 5 PM (Piazzetta Giorgio Morandi, 2 - Bologna), the Federico Zeri Foundation will inaugurate Nuova Mixage Up, a large-scale installation by Flavio Favelli, curated by Roberto Pinto. Specially conceived for the reading room of the Zeri Library—home to the Federico Zeri Foundation and the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna— the exhibition will be open to the public free of charge from 16 January to 28 March.

It is part of the ART CITY Bologna 2025 programme, which runs alongside Arte Fiera, and is supported by the University of Bologna with the backing of Hera. A key aspect of this project is the use of a previously unseen space of great historical and artistic value, which, for the first time, will open its doors to the international audience of ART CITY Bologna and Arte Fiera, featuring the work of a contemporary artist. Flavio Favelli—one of the most compelling Italian artists of his generation and a leading figure in contemporary art in Italy for many years—will present the temporary installation of Nuova Mixage Up during a special event on Friday, 7 February, at 6 PM, as part of Arte Fiera week. The Nuova Mixage Up installation consists of a series of large wooden shelves holding 216 liquor bottles of varying shapes and sizes, collected by the artist over time. This work is fully in line with Favelli’s artistic vision, which focuses on objects imbued with memory, reassembled and given new

significance.

Positioned above the bookcases at the centre of the room, the backless shelves will create an immense visual partition—a dynamic sequence of shapes and colours that blend seamlessly with the books on the surrounding walls, forming a single, unified composition. The exhibition will have special opening hours during ART CITY Bologna (7–9 February 2025), the institutional programme of exhibitions and events promoted by the City of Bologna for Arte Fiera. Additionally, on Thursday, 13 February, at 5:30 PM, the Federico Zeri Foundation will host Talk with the Artist: Flavio Favelli in Conversation with Roberto Pinto. A catalogue, published by bruno (Venice) and edited by Andrea Bacchi and Roberto Pinto, professors at the Department of the Arts at the University of Bologna, will be available.

The entire bottle collection will also be photographed and made accessible on a dedicated web platform developed by Var Digital Art by Var Group, a company actively engaged in exploring the intersection of art and new technologies, which has contributed its digital expertise to the project.