On the occasion of LODI BASéLL, Gian Marco Casini Gallery presents PEBBLE IN THE SKY @casa/studio Carlo Orsini Lodi, Via Maddalena 6.

Inserting itself into a noble genealogy of exhibitions in domestic settings, ranging from the exhibition on Harald Szeeman's grandfather, a hairdresser, in his apartment in Bern in 1974, to Belgian curator Jon Hop commissioning works from 50 artists and exhibiting them in as many private apartments in Ghent in 1986, to the exhibition by Fischli&Weiss and Christian Boltanski in the kitchen of Hans Ulrich Obrist's apartment in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 1991, to the 3rd Berlin Biennale curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Giomi, and Ali Subotnik, where some works were installed in private homes, even in bathrooms, in 2006, to Paola Clerico's "Case Chiuse" project, which brought solo exhibitions of artists to outstanding Milanese homes from 2014 to 2019, and to Venice in the home of collector architects during the last Art Biennale in 2022, so Gian Marco Casini has decided, for his first trip outside Livorno and on the occasion of LODI BASéLL, to choose Lodi and Carlo Orsini's studio as the exhibition venue.

Thanking Carlo Orsini for the temporary hospitality of the gallery at his residence, for the occasion, I, Gian Marco Casini, together with artists Alessandro Manfrin, Clarissa Baldassarri, Juan Pablo Macı́as, Margherita Moscardini, Stefano Serretta, and Renato Spagnoli, will bring a suitcase, a container full of our most cherished things to Lodi.

Each artist will present a kind of clear and strong statement through an object that will be contained in the suitcase. I asked them for an exercise in density, summarizing within the intimate or work dimension, or both. And I like to think that each thing on display will be understood as an unsolicited, intimate, urgent, uncomfortable, fatal gift. It will not necessarily be an artwork. It can be a book, a video, a phrase, anything.

I asked each artist two questions: as an artist, what would you take with you to a deserted island? What is the work, object, inscription, trace that you want to survive with you?

Through these two questions, they will create the work to put in the suitcase. And I would like visitors, and above all those who will give a home to our things, to think of this "container" as a message in a bottle let loose in the ocean or as a capsule launched into space in the hope that someone will pick it up. A gift with no expectation of a return.

In the end, I am the artists I represent, and I would like to create, through this exhibition, a device capable of representing me, which can be replicated, rethought, reworked for different occasions to come. This will be the first "Pebble in the Sky," the first little stone thrown into the sky that is caught by Carlo Orsini. I would like this first passage to give life to a chain. Carlo Orsini will become the guardian and temporary owner of the suitcase, which will come accompanied by a letter with my story. When he feels he no longer needs it, he will send this container, along with a letter telling his own story, to the new temporary custodian.
Creating a chain that aims to be infinite. And above all, with no expectation of a return.

Gian Marco Casini.