AS ICE

AES+F (RU/DE/US), Almagul Menlibayeva (KAZ), Caroline McManus (US), Eleonora Roaro (IT), Emilio Perez (US), Gregor Hildebrandt (DE), Khaled Ramadan (LB/DK), Indra Moroder Valecha (IT/UK), Ivínguak` Stork Høegh (GL), Laura Pugno (IT), Peter Aerschmann (CH), Philip Samartzis (AU), Pietro Capogrosso (IT), Yitian Yan (CN)

Curated by Stefano Cagol

May 10 – October 26, 2025

AES+F, "Last Riot", 2005, 1-channel video 22′30″. Courtesy AES+F. All rights reserved

In the middle of the Alps, adhering to the International Year for the Conservation of Glaciers decreed by UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Castel Belasi – Contemporary Art Center for Ecological Thought presents from May 10th to the end of October the exhibition “As Ice” with works by fourteen international artists of different generations, high in the global ranking and very young, to make us reflect on the concept of fragility and disappearance, between protection, conflict and spirituality in an era in which beliefs and certainties are dissolving like snow in the sun.

The show curated by Stefano Cagol unfolds on the upper exhibition floor of the castle, where it enters into dialogue with the sixteenth-century frescoes of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the ancient myth of Perseus, a symbol of the capacity for conscious change. Here, the fulcrum of the itinerary is a large-scale projection, which presents an iconic video work from the beginning of the millennium by the Russian collective based in Berlin and New York AES+F, celebrated by numerous biennales. It is a dystopian world rising higher, where the last ice remains, hungry for energy and warlike. Another focal point is the monument to ice as a countdown, which the prominent German artist Gregor Hildebrandt symbolically links with human time, marking the years with LP records. The other sculptural work on display is by Laura Pugno, who pursues the impossible: fixing the snow while it is melting in a resistant sculpture. The photo collages of the Inuit artist living in Greenland, Ivínguak` Stork Høegh, stage Arctic paradoxes, while the sound work of the Australian Philip Samartzis evokes the movements of the Antarctic plates, making the ice a thin red thread that unites in a single destiny. If the Lebanese artist, curator and documentary filmmaker based in Copenhagen Khaled Ramadan recalls with hope the generative power of ice and its role in the origin of life, the Swiss Peter Aerschmann, whose works are part of the Pinault Collection, shows icebergs as ghosts. A mortally hurt ice, bloodstained, is the protagonist of the installation of the young London-based artist Indra Moroder Valecha, from South Tyrol of Romansch culture, and also of the video installation of another young artist, the Chinese Yitian Yan, who made her mark at the Arts Center on Governors Island in New York. Emilio Perez, a well-known New York artist, speaks of emptiness rather than white in his painting, as does the evanescence of the brush strokes of the Italian Pietro Capogrosso. Running along the line of the colour white, the comparison triggered by the American Caroline McManus is between the toxic durability of polystyrene packaging and the ephemeral life of ice. Trying to save us from our inexorable journey into a desert, symbolically visualized by Eleonora Roaro, is the rite immortalized by the prominent, internationally recognized artist from Kazakhstan, Almagul Menlibayeva. The dance of six shaman women in the mountains of Central Asia closes the exhibition, suggesting the need to reconcile ourselves with the elements of nature of which we are inseparably part.

The exhibition is part of a trilogy inspired by the nearby Dolomites, a mountain range in the Italian Alps, and devoted by Castel Belasi to water, which includes “As Rain” (2023) and “As Islands” (2024).

“As Ice” is realized in collaboration with MUSE Science Museum Trento, with which Castel Belasi has signed a multi-year partnership for the development of joint projects in the name of a dialogue between contemporary art and scientific research on the topics for sustainability.

The other exhibitions of the 2025 season of Castel Belasi, set up in the further exhibition spaces and developed thanks to the partnership with MUSE, include “Harvests and Tales. The Biodiversity in Botanical Art” (May -June 22), the first Italian stage of the international event Botanical Art Worldwide 2025, and “Fragile. The Best of Glasstress” (July 4-October), which explores the topics of ice and vulnerability between humans and nature through a selection of Murano glass sculptures designed by leading international contemporary artists.

The Project Room presents the exhibition “From the Anthropocene to the Biocene”  starting on May 10 with under-35 artists from the MUSE masterclass We Are the Flood #3. The fourth We Are the Flood masterclass will be held between MUSE and Castel Belasi in September, with Francesca Guerisoli as the guest.

Castel Belasi – Contemporary Art Center for Eco Thought in a Medieval Castle in the Alps at the foot of the Brenta Dolomites in Val di Non – Trentino is a municipal institution of the Municipality of Campodenno, open to the public in 2021. The artistic director has been Stefano Cagol since 2023.

The Castle

The architectural structure of over 13 thousand cubic meters develops within the defensive wall structure of the late 13th century, rotates around the pentagonal tower and preserves a Renaissance extension with frescoes. They include, in addition to a Fogolinian room, a Judgement of Paris by Bartlme Dill Riemeschneider and a Queen of Sheba visiting Jerusalem of Nordic quality, unexpectedly pervaded by a clear and ever-timely message that invites us to be careful of the consequences of all our choices. This red thread of great ethical value continues without interruption in the temporary exhibition projects.