Through the contributions of various artists, the project assembles a collective bestiary generated from a single original form: the snake. Its sinuous, continuous line serves as the starting point for representing other animals, generating reinterpretations, transformations, and narrative possibilities.

The airport security seized a millennium-old egg from an extinct bird. The egg has a great value. ‘Eggs and Toast’ is the name of a recipe category that emerged from a monitor in the museum. The transmission of a culinary secret triggers the project that Giuseppe De Mattia develops within the permanent collection spaces. In a place dedicated to historical memory, the artist introduces a minor yet marvelous narrative, highlighting the role of images and words in constructing memories. The project connects different worlds, stimulating unconventional reflections on memory and communication.

Intervening in the minimal architecture of the Via Mascarella space, Rota alters the physical and perceptual boundaries of the environment: a circular opening cuts through the glass door, connecting the inside with the outside, the floor lights up in bright yellow, while an emergency ladder hangs from the ceiling as if lowered from the sky. In this scenario, tensions release against the walls, the ground, and the vault.

Gobbi’s work is inspired by the Augurs, Roman priests endowed with the gift of divination. The artist imagines that some of them possessed a doubled auditory system. Gobbi’s legend narrates that these unique ears allowed the augurs to hear the past and the future, but left them unable to perceive the present.

“I Pettegolezzi” is a series of paintings by Giuseppe De Mattia in which he attempts an open dialogue with the world in a sort of comic strip where the balloons represent caustic sentences where one doesn’t fully take responsibility for what is written, hiding behind phrases like “it’s said, it’s rumored, they say,” etc. In this series as well, De Mattia perpetuates his interest in tragicomedy. Here, in a kind of open tragicomic poetry with the world, he refers to the graphics of posters from a specific moment in Italian cinema and theater.

The multiple “I Pettegolezzi” published by Aosta Publishing, Florence with a text by Treti Galaxie, is produced by the Matèria Gallery in Rome and Opr in Milan, collecting a handful of sketches for as many new paintings in the series of “I Pettegolezzi”.

Interior and exterior coexist in a patchwork of scraps, recompositions, remixes. A joint for forgotten stories, which find themselves in a symbiotic and syncretic manner. Alliances are formed with other species, more stories are built with more creatures. The word is authorized to renew itself. There are no longer limitations on the existence conditions of organisms. We want to leave the houses and infect the outside with the inside. The painted paper manifesto is a papyrus of the future, which recalls the night of times, the houses lived in by humanity for many centuries, the sudden ecological desolation of the last century, and then again the abandonment of every dwelling. “This passion for wandering prophesies the poetics of relationship” between multiple creatures and temporalities.

Toast Project and Aosta Publishing present, in collaboration with the Mario Mariotti Archive and the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, present the project (fuori testo) Mario Mariotti on the occasion of the fourth edition of TESTO [Come si diventa un libro].
The project aims to celebrate the imaginative genius of Mario Mariotti, the creator of the covers for the “Il Castoro” series, a literary collection produced between 1967 and 1984 by the Florentine publishing house La Nuova Italia. The series comprises critical monographs on major contemporary Italian and foreign writers. For over fifteen years, Il Castoro published a small volume each month, with the distinctive size of 16.8×15 cm, each featuring an original cover designed by Mario Mariotti: a sort of encyclopedia, intended for an undefined audience, those who fill the squares with voices, schools with protests, and bookstores with customers.

Every month, for more than fifteen years, Il Castoro published a small volume in the unusual 16.8 × 15 cm format, featuring an original cover designed by Mario Mariotti for each title: “a sort of encyclopedia intended for an undefined audience, the one that fills squares with voices, schools with protests, and bookstores with customers” (Alessandro Piccioni).

In addition to creating hundreds of covers for Il Castoro, in 1975 Mario Mariotti himself became part of the series with his own (fuori testo)—literally titled with the parentheses—which documents his artistic laboratory and working process, beginning with Libro circolare (Circular Book), a unique work from 1968 donated to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

In February 2025, a selection of these covers returned to the public sphere through a city-wide poster campaign across Florence. Developed in collaboration with the Archivio Mario Mariotti and the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, the project involved the installation of 188 posters reproducing Mariotti’s covers for Il Castoro, bringing this remarkable body of work back into the urban landscape and reactivating its dialogue with a contemporary public.

A series of gatherings in which invited artists share some of the most significant books from their personal collections. The selected volumes will be displayed on a table and made available for browsing, allowing visitors to explore them freely.

A project developed in collaboration with mazoopub, as part of Recreos, a project by Fondazione CR Firenze in partnership with the Municipality of Florence.

Mi trova la fortuna?, Peter Fischli, David Weiss, Cologne, Walther König, 2003.

Non c’è rosa senza spine, Giorgio Griffa, Martano, Turin, 1975.

Come non detto, Giulio Paolini, Martino Oberto, Mario Nöel, Mario Nöel Editore, Bari, 1980.

…uccello d’artista, Una strana storia di 8 episodi, Mimmo Conenna, maquette for an unrealised book, unique copy, 1980.

Astrazione, Claudio Parmiggiani, All’insegna del Pesce d’Oro, Milan, 1968.

Drawings – Hand Tools (Ideal Order Book), Philippe Weisbecker, Amus Arts Press, Osaka, Japan, 2003.

A Grammar of Color, Arrangements of Strathmore Papers in a Variety of Printed Color Combinations According to the Munsell Color System, A. H. Munsell, T. M. Cleland, The Strathmore Paper Company, Mittineague, Mass., 1921.

A series of gatherings in which invited artists share some of the most significant books from their personal collections. The selected volumes will be displayed on a table and made available for browsing, allowing visitors to explore them freely.

A series of gatherings in which invited artists share some of the most significant books from their personal collections. The selected volumes will be displayed on a table and made available for browsing, allowing visitors to explore them freely.

A series of gatherings in which invited artists share some of the most significant books from their personal collections. The selected volumes will be displayed on a table and made available for browsing, allowing visitors to explore them freely.