Deadline With The World is the first joint exhibition by Gabriele Garavaglia (1981, Vercelli / Zurich) and Miriam Laura Leonardi (1985, Lörrach / Zurich). While both artistic practices are rooted in conceptual art, Garavaglia’s work incorporates elements drawn from urban mythologies, fantasy literature, and cinematic aesthetics into politically charged installations. Leonardi’s practice, on the other hand, translates the observation of public space into a rigorous investigation of language, where semantic codes are dismantled and reshaped into images of strong critical and poetic impact. For Istituto Svizzero, they have developed a project conceived in response to the exhibition context, featuring both jointly created pieces and individual works.

For their first collaborative show, Garavaglia and Leonardi have devised a site-specific installation for the spaces of Istituto Svizzero in Milan. Entitled Deadline With The World, the exhibition engages with the sterile, corporate architecture of the building, transforming it into a para-urban landscape punctuated by a sequence of shutters. The initial impression is that of readymades taken from the street but, on closer inspection, the objects are precisely designed, refined to their utmost formal clarity. The works are arranged strategically along the walls to neutralise any architectural distractions such as air vents, doors, or other access points.

Once stripped of its pre-existing features, the Istituto Svizzero can open up to new possible spaces. Garavaglia and Leonardi’s interventions draw on the iconography of the garage as a space of promise, of the eternal “not yet”. It is the rehearsal room of someone learning to play music, but also the first office of the “self-made man” in the founding myth of technological innovation. A full-scale bulldozer dominates the space, an eccentric trophy kept in someone’s garage, or a weapon ready to uproot whatever it encounters. Above the shutters, a sign limiting access to oversized vehicles in the car park reads “Pull Up To The Climax”. Outside the space, someone has played golf too vigorously in the courtyard, smashing into the window. In Deadline With The World, the visual grammar of success and that of impending catastrophe alternate and overlap, suggesting that the world might have been built – and destroyed – in a garage.

Curated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti (Head Curator Istituto Svizzero)

With the support of:

Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung

Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung

Stiftung Erna und Curt Burgauer

Kanton Solothurn (for Miriam Laura Leonardi’s work)