Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea presents, as part of the institution’s 40th anniversary celebrations, the series Inserzioni (Insertions), a new format which commissions contemporary artists to create works specifically for the Castello. The artists featured in the first edition of the project are Guglielmo Castelli (Turin – Italy, 1987), Lydia Ourahmane (Saïda – Algeria, 1992), and Oscar Murillo (Valle del Cauca – Colombia, 1986). On the occasion of Inserzioni, the museum will also present the winning work of the 2025 Collective Prize, Culture Lost and Learned by Heart: Butterfly, 2021, by Adji Dieye (Milan – Italy, 1991), and recently acquired works Mare con gabbiano, 1967, by Piero Gilardi (Turin – Italy, 1942–2023) and a.C., 2017, by Roberto Cuoghi (Modena – Italy, 1973).

Inserzioni introduces new commissions into the fabric of the Castello di Rivoli’s collection, inviting a selection of artists particularly relevant today to each intervene in a room of the museum, relating to the ornate architecture, the museum’s exhibition history and the other works currently on display. The format, lasting six months and renewed twice a year, transforms rooms traditionally dedicated to Collection displays into a constantly evolving collective exhibition, bringing new voices into the centre of the institutional narrative, rather than exhibiting them in a separate dedicated room, allowing the museum to grow its cultural narration with artists, movements, and geographical areas which have been underrepresented in the museum’s exhibition history and collection.

Inspired by the formula inaugurated by the first director, Rudi Fuchs, for the museum’s first exhibition Ouverture in 1984, each artist is invited to create a work specifically conceived for one of the Castello’s stately rooms, as if to collaborate with them across historical time. As with the first exhibition, the artists and the stories they tell are placed at the centre of the project, emphasising the value of their individual styles. The museum intends to maintain its characteristic openness to the voices of artists at a key moment in the writing of the art history it narrates. This modus operandi incorporates principles particularly relevant today, such as those of inclusivity, openness to other cultures and approaches, and social and cultural participation.

One of the Castello di Rivoli’s particularities is that, since the 18th century, it is an unfinished place. This characteristic turns it into a “container” that artists can literally, or metaphorically, complete by inserting themselves in this uncompleted edifice. This is a unique experience for artists and visitors alike and has given birth to memorable installations. Often the works enriched by the dialogue with the rooms in which they are installed, and vice versa – the rooms becoming stronger thanks to the artistic interventions they contain.

Inserzioni will open to the public from Friday 26 September 2025 until February 2026. The project is supported by the Radical Commissioning Group, a small cohort of benefactors who believe, like the museum, in the need to give artists carte blanche to create visionary works, while at the same time giving the institution the opportunity to expand its voice.

Guglielmo Castelli has worked on a new body of works to be exhibited in the frescoed room dedicated to “the four continents”. The artist presents a new sculptural series, in which some of the characters that populate his paintings escape from them to express in two-dimensional form, within curious three-dimensional environments, an atmosphere of silent childhood and waiting. Made of paper cutouts, these human figures dance and revolve around table maquettes designed by the artist of an imaginary home and theatre setting. On the walls, a series of new paintings — including a monumental one measuring over three metres — depict Castelli’s typical fantastic and condensed atmospheres in which multiple actions, repeated falls and failures take place. In the adjacent long, thin room, a number of works on paper are exhibited, as well as, for the first time, a special presentation of Castelli’s preparatory materials and sketchbooks. They include studies for the characters of his invented world, scrap materials that are converted into an ecosystem of possibilities for composition and layering, together with composition studies that reveal the stages in his creative process.

The project by Guglielmo Castelli is supported by PAC2025 – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Text: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea