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Since July 2026, six of my works have become part of the everyday spaces of the Elio Perrone winery in Castiglione Tinella, Piedmont. They can be found among bottles and tasting tables, in meeting rooms and in spaces where people work, talk, taste wine and spend time together.
CONVERSATIONS at the Elio Perrone winery, Castiglione Tinella, Piedmont, 2026.
CONVERSATIONS did not begin with the idea of creating an exhibition. It developed from an encounter with a place — and with Stefano Perrone, whose approach to wine extends beyond what happens in the vineyard and cellar.
At Elio Perrone, architecture, landscape and hospitality are closely connected. Large parts of the winery are built into the hillside, reducing the building’s visual impact on the surrounding landscape. Inside, concrete, wood, glass and carefully considered details create spaces that are functional without feeling merely functional.
The same attention to landscape and detail shapes the approach to wine-making — one that values patience, observation and complexity.
It was within this environment that the idea of bringing art into the winery began to make sense.
The six works currently installed at Elio Perrone are from my series Violence in Residence.
Placed in the winery, however, they enter a different situation. They are not isolated in a gallery or presented in a neutral exhibition space. They become part of an environment that already has its own rhythms, functions and relationships.
People encounter them while tasting wine, during a meeting, while walking through the building or simply while waiting for someone.
This changes the encounter.
The works remain the same, but the conditions in which they are seen do not. Wine, architecture, landscape, conversation and art begin to coexist without needing to become one thing.
And perhaps this is where CONVERSATIONS really begins.
Wine and art have obvious differences, but there are also unexpected connections.
Both involve observation and decisions. Both depend on time. Both can be approached analytically, but ultimately have to be experienced. And neither reveals everything at first sight.
CONVERSATIONS is not an attempt to illustrate wine through art or to use art as decoration for wine. It is an experiment in allowing different practices to occupy the same space and seeing what happens when they do.
For me, this is what makes the collaboration interesting: its outcome does not need to be determined in advance.
The works currently installed at Elio Perrone are part of the series Violence in Residence.
→ Explore Violence in Residence
The subtitle of the project is deliberately an ongoing collaboration between wine and art.
The current installation is one moment in that collaboration, not necessarily its conclusion.
What may grow from it remains open: new encounters, different contexts, other people becoming involved — or simply conversations that would not otherwise have taken place.
For now, six works are living temporarily in a winery in Piedmont.
