No House Is Empty

An empty house is not really empty, Alessandro Vicario suggests as he moves cautiously through the rooms of an abandoned apartment, looking for traces that keep it alive. Objects tell us its story indirectly, and who knows whether it is the same story: a chair, an old wood-burning cooker, a letterbox, the knobs of a chest of drawers, which once accompanied someone’s life and now appear charged with an aseptic presence of their own. In Nel segreto di una casa, the exhibition curated by Elena Carotti opening on Tuesday 9 at Lab 1930 (Via Mantova 21; Tuesday–Friday 10 a.m.–5 p.m., by appointment at lab1930.com; until 24 May; Saturday 13 and Sunday 14, 4–7 p.m., without an appointment), Vicario uses a rigorous close-up view that heightens and brings details vividly to life, projecting his subjects into a strange dimension where even silence has words.