Alfredo Aceto / Raphael Danke
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UNA is delighted to present Secret Garden, a two-person show by Alfredo Aceto (*1991, Turin) and Raphael Danke (*1972, Germany).
The show features newly produced works spanning sculpture, installation, photography, and painting. These pieces delve into the artists’ inner landscapes, while also evoking a confined external space – like the one suggested by the exhibition’s title. The dialogue between personal experience and a cultivated idea of nature emerges throughout the show, where nature becomes both companion and counterpoint to the body and self.
For this occasion, Alfredo Aceto presents Trap, a new bronze sculpture inspired by a childhood memory: a moment spent with his father observing a trap for processionary caterpillars in their garden. As in much of Aceto’s practice, the work unearths emotional sediment and hidden traumas, weaving personal and collective narratives. The sculpture probes themes of self-perception, unresolved emotional tensions, and the body’s spatial dimension, addressing sexuality as a transformative force poised between life and death. Also on view is a work from Aceto’s emblematic Campanula series, which introduces a sonic and performative element through the use of bells. Campanula reflects the artist’s unique relationship with sound: his amusia – a condition that impairs the ability to recognize musical tones – becomes a tool for expanding sensory inquiry, questioning the limits and possibilities of perception. Alfredo Aceto’s presentation is enriched, as often in his exhibitions, by a photographic contribution that brings together different types of photographs into a unified “ensemble”. These works explore the garden as a site of intimacy, memory, and sensory reflection.
Raphael Danke presents works from his Molusce series, begun in 2021, where shells are transformed into anthropomorphic masks by drilling holes that reveal their internal structures. Mounted on concrete blocks and salvaged wood and iron from the construction of his home, these sculptures evoke a tension between the natural and the artificial, fragility and permanence. Also on view is a new series of canvases dyed with natural pigments collected in Provence—walnuts, bark, ivy—and made in standard TV screen sizes. These earthy monochromes become perceptive surfaces that transform architectural voids into meditative, sensitive spaces. Completing the exhibition is a selection of 10 pieces from Die Geister des Gartens open edition: small snail shells collected from the artist’s garden, titled Ghost, scattered across the gallery walls in an attempt to make the architecture come alive, echoing the materiality of the snail shells.
The exhibition is part of the XNL Aperto circuit, a project coordinated by XNL Arte and its director Paola Nicolin, which for the fourth consecutive year brings together exhibitions, events, and special projects in a joint opening, creating an emotional map of contemporary art in the city of Piacenza. Click here for the full programme.
Opening Saturday 20 September 4:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Special Opening Hours Sunday 21 September 10:30 am - 1 pm & 3 pm - 6 pm
Exhibition 20 September - 31 December 2025
UNA | PIACENZA, via Sant' Antonino 33
Alfredo Aceto (1991, Turin, Italy, lives and works in Turin and Geneva). Following studies at ECAL (École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne) and MSA^, The Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, his work has been presented in a range of international institutions, including DOC! (Paris), MCBA (Lausanne), Museo del Novecento (Milan), Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève (Geneva), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (St. Gallen), Kunsthaus Glarus (Glarus), and CAPC (Bordeaux). In 2019, he received the Leenaards Cultural Grant from the Fondation Leenaards, and in 2024, he was nominated for the Swiss Art Awards in Basel. He currently teaches at ECAL (École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne). Among his most recent solo exhibitions are Full Moon Sergio at CIRCUIT in Lausanne (2024) and Faces of Francis at MLIS (Maison du Livre, de l’Image et du son) in Villeurbanne Lyon (2024). His works entered various private and public collections, among them: MAMCO, Geneva; MCBA, Lausanne; Museo del 900, Milan; Centre d’Art Contemporain de Geneve; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Turin; Wallriss; Stoffel Collection, Cologne; Mobilière Collection, CH; Crédit Suisse; Julius Bär, Zurich; BCV, Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, CH.
Raphael Danke (1972, Aachen, Germany, lives and works in Berlin and Brandenburg). After studying in Germany, he has exhibited widely across Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Oceania, including institutions such as Kunsthalle Basel (Basel), Museum Fridericianum (Kassel), MARTa Herford Museum (Herford), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile. Among his solo exhibitions: Musiksteine, a permanent public sculpture in the Theaterpark in Brandenburg an der Havel (2025); Non Corpo (Knust und Kunz, Munich, 2024); Gli Spiriti del Giardino and Bilocation (Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin, 2023 & 2019) Disappearing in Direction of the Bathroom (MOT International, London, 2012). Danke’s work has also been a recurring presence in group exhibitions curated by major international programs such as IfA Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the Goethe-Institut, which have brought his work to Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Vietnam, and beyond.
Among the private and public collections that acquired his work: Collezione La Gaia, Busca, IT; Sammlung Schürmann, Aachen, DE; About Change Collection, Berlin; Marta Herford Museum, Herford, DE; Gregory Papadimitriou collection, Athens; FER Collection, Ulm, DE; Nicoletta Fiorucci, Monte Carlo, Monaco; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, DE; DEKA Bank, DE; Galila's P.O.C, Brussels; SteDi Collection, Berlin; Sammlung Rudolf Zwirner, Berlin; Anette Bollag-Rothschild, Küsnacht, Switzerland.
