From February 6 to September 7, 2025 , on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Bologna , the MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna of the Sector Musei Civici Bologna presents the large collective exhibition Facile ironia. L'ironia nell'arte italiana tra XX e XXI secolo, curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Caterina Molteni .
Designed for the spaces of the Sala delle Ciminiere , with more than 100 works and archive documents by over 70 artists , the exhibition spans a period of about seventy years - from the 1950s to today - aiming to retrace the history of Italian art through the theme of irony .
Already in the ancient world, thanks to figures such as Socrates and Plato, irony is "the art of asking questions": a completely unique tool, which allows human beings to have a clearer and more disenchanted view of reality, as it is able to reveal anomalies and contradictions. Through humorous games, parodies and jokes, irony also becomes an antidote, a fun and witty alternative to protect man from what afflicts him.
Ironic in itself, the title of the exhibition recalls the apparent simplicity of the phenomenon while revealing its intrinsic complexity. A contradiction that becomes a game in all respects and that invites the public to question the nature of language, the clichés that accompany it and, at the same time, the way in which these influence our observation and interpretation of the world around us.
Italian artists of different generations have shared an anti-tragic aesthetic and existential strategy that embraces the “cosmic joke” of reality.
This critical and imaginative context is narrated in the exhibition by the development of macro-thematic areas , useful in illustrating the different declinations of irony and the trans-historicity of the phenomenon: the paradox , its connection with the game , irony as a feminist weapon of criticism of patriarchy and the Italian social order, its relationship with political mobilization, irony as a form of institutional criticism , as a practice of nonsense and finally as dark humor .
The exhibition is supported by the main sponsor Gruppo Hera and is part of the institutional program of ART CITY Bologna 2025 created on the occasion of Arte Fiera.
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