Image: Wolfsoniana, Genoa
Marco Mazzarello’s 'Il Terzo Paradiso' is set to open on 6 August at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, occupying the Cortile Minore through 30 September 2026. The project is presented as a contemporary rereading of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s well-known 'Terzo Paradiso' symbol, and it will be shown in the historic palace alongside the city’s summer cultural programme.
According to the exhibition material, the work is conceived as a collective reflection on peace, preventive peace, responsibility, and the safeguarding of cultural heritage. The installation is described as a monumental three-dimensional version of the symbol, built from hundreds of jute sacks. The choice of material is central to the project’s meaning: the sacks recall the protective structures used in wartime to shield monuments, artworks, and places of memory.
The exhibition text links that imagery to recent conflict zones, including Ukraine, but frames the reference more broadly as a sign of how cultural objects are defended when they are under threat. The work asks what is required to protect what represents cultural identity, and it positions protection itself as a visual language rather than a purely practical measure.
Pistoletto’s 'Terzo Paradiso' is presented in the source material as one of the major theoretical formulations of Italian contemporary art. The symbol transforms the infinity sign into three circles, with the central circle understood as a site of synthesis and a possible new equilibrium between opposites such as nature and artifice, tradition and innovation, and the individual and the collective. Mazzarello’s project is described as drawing on that framework while focusing on the fragilities of the present.
The exhibition is curated by Tommaso Venco and is said to be inspired by Pistoletto’s 'Terzo Paradiso'. It is organized by Hexisart and Willy Montini Arte in collaboration with Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte. The source material does not identify a separate venue outside Palazzo Ducale for the presentation, and it specifies the setting as the Cortile Minore.
In the exhibition text, the courtyard installation is also placed in dialogue with Palazzo Ducale’s historic architecture, turning the site into a space where heritage and contemporary practice meet. The project is framed as a meditation on memory, the role of culture in peace processes, and the need for a new collective consciousness, using the language of installation to connect a recognized symbol of contemporary Italian art with the urgencies of the present. The exhibition runs from 6 August to 30 September 2026 at Palazzo Ducale, Cortile Minore, Genoa.
