Exhibition

The exhibition is composed of nineteen works , a large number of which have come from international museums such as the Guggenheim in New York, the Hirshhorn in Washington and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.

For this occasion, Robert Irwin and James Turrell have created works that have been specifically designed for the spaces of Villa Panza. For the Scuderia Grande (main stable block), Turrell has conceived a new Ganzfeld entitled Sight Unseen, whereas Irwin has put together a new site-conditional installation called Villa Panza 2013. By subtly altering the environment of the Limonaia (lemon house), the artist has arrived at a pure space shaped by natural light and by a nylon canopy that rhythmically and geometrically delineates a track similar to a labyrinth, intended to evoke mankind's incessant search for a path and purpose.

Other works on show have been part of the Varese Collection since the 1970s (Villa Panza is the only museum in Italy that plays host to site-specific works by the two artists) thanks to the farsightedness of Giuseppe Panza, who commissioned them to come up with several memorable works: Irwin's Varese Portal Room, Varese Scrim and Varese Window Room (1973); and Turrell's Lunette, Sky Space I and Virga (1974). All of these works definitively marked out the relationship between the use of architecture and the creation of new visual experiences.

Along with the exhibition proper, there is also a documentary section that is geared towards describing the friendship and partnership between Giuseppe Panza and the two artists through letters, photographs and designs from the Getty Research Library in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In addition, there are new video interviews that constitute an important resource for deepening our understanding of the poetics of Robert Irwin and James Turrell.