To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her gallery, Susanna Orlando has chosen to pay tribute to Florence, her native city, with an exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Chiari, the Florentine artist who was among the principal protagonists of the extraordinary Fluxus movement.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Chiari (Florence, 26 September 1926 – Florence, 9 May 2007)—visual artist, musician, pianist, and composer—and in 2027 the twentieth anniversary of his death will also be commemorated.

“The term Fluxus has always intrigued me, as has the idea of expressive freedom inherent in that remarkable group of figures and artists. I never personally met the master Giuseppe Chiari, yet his Gesti sul piano, his marks and scratches on the scores—at once childlike and revolutionary—have always fascinated me. I imagine him at the concert with John Cage slowly tearing the very object of his craft, a musical score, just as he did in the Florentine studios where he loved to spend time working.

Chiari disseminated art. Chiari was a worker of art. A Florentine like me.

And so, with this first exhibition, I set in motion the celebrations of my fifty years of activity.

We begin from Florence.”

The project centers on a core group of previously unseen and significant works by Chiari, originating from a Florentine atelier where the artist enjoyed spending time. These works will be “animated” through the inclusion of other international artists and performers, both connected to the Fluxus sphere and from outside it, yet still linked to Chiari’s figure.

This association of diverse works, conceived as a kind of visual counterpoint, aims to create an ideal concert in the spirit of this international movement, which saw—in a continuous and compelling flow—the union of art and life.

These artists are, as it were, summoned to celebrate not only the gallery’s fiftieth anniversary (founded in 1976), but also the centenary of Chiari’s birth (1926), as in a celebration inspired by Fluxus—or, to use the English term, a party, as suggested in the subtitle.

At heart, the exhibition arises from the same festive and playful spirit inherited from these extraordinary figures.

The invited artists, through their works, participate in the whole as musical counterpoints, based on affinities or divergences from the leitmotifs of Chiari’s poetics—play, improvisation, chance, involvement, gesture—allowing viewers to grasp immediately the spirit of both Chiari’s work and that of the participating artists, engaging independently, free of intellectual superstructures, in the associative play generated by the juxtaposition of the works.

To further activate Chiari’s legacy, the project also includes the involvement of musicians in performances linked to his central theme of improvisation.

“Suonare la stanza” (“Playing the Room”) by Giuseppe Chiari inspires the project’s fundamental idea: music is sound, and the sonic world belongs to visible reality.

In one of his statements, the artist provides instructions for making a room resonate through various instruments—from the performer’s body to sticks and other percussive tools—interacting with the elements present in the environment.

The project draws on this intuition: to create a kind of music box in which all the elements and events present may, in a broad sense, resonate and interact with one another.