Wagner Resonances. Visions Around the Ring

30 January – 3 May 2026

Curated by
Gianluigi Colin
Mattia Palma

Straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Wagnerism was a pervasive cultural phenomenon from which no artist or intellectual could escape. Nietzsche’s famous maxim is emblematic: “Wagner sums up modernity. There is nothing to be done; one must begin by being Wagnerian.”

Yet the influence of the Wagnerian phenomenon in general—and of the monumental project of the Ring in particular—has never ceased: from the very concept of seriality to the unpredictable branches of fantasy, even today we are all, more or less consciously, indebted to that revolutionary artistic vision.

The challenge undertaken here has been to explore whether contemporary artistic personalities can still resonate with the Tetralogy. Four visual artists were therefore invited to engage with the themes, characters, and situations of the Ring, adapting them to their own poetics and individual styles.

The result is a series of visions that in no way seek to reproduce or illustrate the reality of the stage: these are not set designs, but visual and painterly reinterpretations, fully rooted in the present while simultaneously permeated by an explicit Wagnerian lineage.