“Potersi dire” is the title of Italo Zuffi's project for the MAN Museum, the second of a series of in-depth views into the life of the artist that the Nomas Foundation of Rome inaugurated last February and that will also involve the de Appel Arts Centre of Amsterdam and the ar/ge kunst of Bolzano during 2015. 

The exhibition at the MAN reveals two distinct lines of exploration in the artist's works: one that is more intimate with an introspective investigation and the other dealing with the analysis of his relationship with art as a system, always seen and resolved through an autobiographic filter. 

To the former line belongs the work Poesie doppie (Double Poems), created in 2014, a performance in which Zuffi recites some of his recent poems. The content of the verses offers an observation on the period of relations "on bodily awareness, travelling towards an existential mitigation”. His recital of the poems by memory takes place in a choreography aimed at creating a distraction, as well as proposing an exercise in meditation. 

The second work on display, Incentivi(Incentives), is a new one created for the MAN project, conceived as a direct dialogue with art as a system, in which are evoked internal rules and collective reasons for legitimation. A cycle of texts on canvas that reflects on the relationship between the production of works and their circulation through promotional and marketing systems. These new works, presented in the museum's project room, continue along the line of verification that the artist began in 2010, dealing with the concept of “competition” as a representation of what concerns both strategies for the circulation of works and the places of their diffusion and the agents involved in this. In this case, the work interrogates the artist's economy in the extended ambit of the art market. 

The MAN exhibition will be flanked by a workshop with the artist’s first-level students in the course of Law and Economy of Art and Culture (Deca master) organized by the University of Sassari Law School together with UniNuoro and the Banco di Sardegna Foundation. The workshop will include the performance of a series of group exercises aimed at developing a critical analysis of the vision and experience of the work in the context of a system.

Italo Zuffi was born in Imola in 1969 and lives in Milan. In his work he employs sculpture, performances, photography and writing to create "not a total design, but an indefinite series of rooms" (Pier Luigi Tazzi, 2003). He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna (Diploma in Painting, 1993), and at the Central St. Martins School of Art & Design of London (Master of Arts, 1997). In 2001 he was assigned the Wheatley Bequest Fellowship in Sculpture at the Birmingham Institute of Art & Design (GB). He has been a professor of sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy of L'Aquila since February 2015, and since 2011 he has been the Guest Lecturer in Performance at the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague (NL).

Recent one-man exhibition: Quello che eri, e quello che sei (What you were and what you are), Nomas Foundation, Rome; Gli ignari (The Unaware), private flat, Milan (2013); La penultima assenza del corpo (The Next-to-Last Absence of the Body), Pietro Rossini Foundation, Briosco (2012); Zuffi, Italo, Pinksummer, Genoa (2010).

Recent collective exhibitions: Esercizi di Rivoluzione (Exercises in Revolution), a project of the Maxxi and the Nomas Foundation, Maxxi, Rome (2014); Le leggi dell’ospitalità (The Laws of Hospitality), Galleria P420, Bologna (2014); Per4m, Artissima, Turin (2014); I baffi del bambino (The Baby's Moustache), Lucie Fontaine, Milan (2014); La Pelle – Symphony of Destruction, MAXXX Project Space, Sierre (2014); Le statue calde (The Warm Statues), Florence 2014); Drive my car, OPENING, Via Pola, Milan (2013); Italia Tropici (Tropics Italy), Angelo Mai Altrove Occupato, Rome (2013);Il fascino discreto dell’oggetto (The Discreet Fascination of the Object). Figure 2: Natura Morta (Still Life), GNAM, Rome (2013); Almanac, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York (2013); Fuoriclasse (The Ace), Villa Reale, Milan (2012); Mexico City Blues, Shanaynay, Paris (2012) and the New York Gallery, New York (2012).