If, as Walter Benjamin argues, in collecting “all passions overflow into chaos” in a continuous tension between the two poles of order and disorder, can the same be said of a museum’s collection? The exhibition VX30 | CHAOTIC PASSION, conceived on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Museo di Villa Croce, explored this dialectical relationship by initiating a dialogue between the historical works in the collection and those produced over the last ten years by a new generation of artists. Starting from the hypothesis that a museum’s permanent collection does not necessarily have to crystallize into a fixed and definitive aesthetic canon, CHAOTIC PASSION proposes a transversal reading of the collection, interpreting it as a vital core of works which, when questioned and repositioned in the present, offer the opportunity for reinterpretations and negotiations of meaning that highlight different aspects of their relevance in relation to the present.

The publication reveals the research work and theoretical reference points from which the exhibition project was articulated. In addition to the essays in which the curators of the exhibition reconstruct the persistent relevance of abstraction and verbo-visual research in contemporary artistic practices and the potential linked to the rereading and rethinking of museum collections, the catalog contains excerpts from Kn by Carlo Belli, considered the manifesto of Italian abstractionism and published in Milan in 1935, and reproductions of selected pages from the avant-garde magazine “Ana Eccetera,” founded by Martino Oberto in Genoa in 1959, illustrating Oberto’s anarchic approach to language.

Artists: Vincenzo Agnetti, Cesi Amoretti, Meris Angioletti, Antonio Calderara, Chiara Camoni, Alice Cattaneo, Cristian Chironi, Ettore Colla, Gianni Colombo, Pietro Consagra, Danilo Correale, Dadamaino, Corrado D'Ottavi, Claire Fontaine, Lucio Fontana, Virginio Ghiringhelli, Silvia Giambrone, Alice Guareschi, Osvaldo Lucini, Piero Manzoni, Jacopo Miliani, Margherita Morgantin, Rebecca Moccia, Bruno Munari, Andrea Nacciarriti, Anna Oberto, Pennacchio Argentato, Serena Porrati, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Mauro Reggiani, Regina, The Cool Couple, Ben Vautier, Serena Vestrucci, Rodolfo Vitone, Void, Gianfranco Zappettini.

The photographic documentation of the exhibition was produced by Nuvola Ravera. The catalog is published by Il Canneto Editore with graphic design by Nom de Plume.