ANTONIO NARDONE - Galerie Nardone

ANTONIO NARDONE

Drawing on my experience as an art historian, I develop projects in which encounters between modern and contemporary art become fertile grounds for experimentation.

Echoing Lautréamont’s Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella from The Songs of Maldoror, my galleries strive to provoke unexpected aesthetic collisions, where the relevance of discourse meets the richness of artistic creation.

Since my beginnings in 1993 at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels — notably with the exhibition Golden Lotus: Chinese Erotic Painting — this dialogue between epochs and cultures has remained a constant thread. To juxtapose bronze mirrors from 2000 BCE with the sharp, erudite lines of Zhu Xinjian is to reveal how human sensibility transcends both time and geography.

This commitment to creating resonances has continued through forty-seven curatorial exhibitions, including a noteworthy participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale with the project Cadavre exquis. In this exhibition, major figures such as Anish Kapoor and Wim Delvoye engaged in dialogue with emerging contemporary artists, demonstrating the vitality of exchanges that bridge generations, disciplines, and languages.

My galleries are conceived as laboratories of ideas — spaces for research, experimentation, and dialogue — where both established and lesser-known artists explore the plastic, conceptual, and social issues of our time. More than exhibition venues, they are platforms of intellectual and artistic exploration, where continuities and ruptures that shape today’s art are constantly redefined.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AS CURATOR

2021
Cadavres Exquis
Anish Kapoor, Berlinde de Bruyckere, …
Biennale de Venise - Chiesetta della misericordia

2015
I Belgi Barbari e Poeti
René Magritte, Pierre Alechinsky, Panamarenko, …
Bruxelles

2015
I Belgi Barbari e Poeti
Johan Muyle, Jan Fabre, Wim Delvoye, B. de Bruyckere, …
Rome - MACRO

2013
Wunderkammer
Cabinet de Curiosité Contemporain
Venise - Palazzo Widmann

2011
Wunderkammer
Cabinet de Curiosité Contemporain
Rome - Academia Belgica Villa Borghese

2011
Wunderkammer
Cabinet de Curiosité Contemporain
Bruxelles - Musée du Botanique

2010
Intersection
Aida Kazarian, Johan Muyle, …
Bruxelles - Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire

1993
Lotus d’Or - Peintures Erotiques Chinoises
Zhu Xinjian
Bruxelles - Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire