UNA gallery @ invitro presents POETRICKS (BIG AND SMALLS), a self-contained selection of Poetricks by Stefano Calligaro.

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Stefano Calligaro is an artist (poetry designer) whose work explores the transformative potential of language. Through a visual world made of words and signs, in 2019 he pared back the eclectic aesthetics of his practice to focus entirely on what he calls Poetricks: a form of clandestine, ambiguous (anti)poetry, free from fixed or conventional interpretations, actively questioning both the value of writing and its content, as well as the significance of being an artist today.

Central to Poetricks is their Materialization: the transformation of words into physical artworks. After writing a Poetrick, Calligaro leaves the choice of form and the entire making of the artwork to gallerists, curators, publishers, local manufacturers, or other individuals involved. Materializations may take the form of paintings on canvas, books, poster editions, wall paintings, embroideries, silkscreen prints, and more (on this occasion the materialization of Poetrick No.2615 as a wall painting is entrusted to Radu Comsa). This collaborative approach makes those involved co-makers of the artwork itself and positions Calligaro less as a traditional artist and more as a composer: he writes the score and then invites others to perform it, working together with an ensemble of people who physically produce the artworks, bringing the written Poetrick into material existence.

Through this personal stance, the artist challenges established social and cultural codes with visual simplicity and a precise (mis)use of language.

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UNA is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to the promotion of artists from the generation born in the 1980s and the 1990s, established in spring 2018 in Piacenza out of a collaboration between Marta Barbieri and Paola Bonino. UNA focuses on artistic researches based on an in-depth investigation of phenomena characterizing the contemporary era, which try to respond to some of its most concerning issues: the cultural and aesthetic homogeneity, the levelling of individual identity, the manipulation operated by Internet, commercial communication and political propaganda. In a spirit of exchange and shared growth, 2025 marks the opening of a second space in Milan. While UNA’s main headquarters remain in Piacenza, the Milan space is conceived as a place of collaboration and dialogue.

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The exhibition is completed by a fold-out invitation card, specially designed by Stefano Calligaro, which invites the public to take home a real scale model of the exhibition space and its contents.