Paola Pivi

Among the most important contemporary artists, with her sculptures, performance pieces and installation Paola Pivi builds a personal universe ruled by the laws of absurdity.

Paola Pivi was born in Milan in 1971. She lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska.

“With her sculptures, performance pieces and installations, Paola Pivi builds an upside-down world, a personal universe ruled by the laws of absurdity. The artist’s work comes out of colossal undertakings, but is pervaded by lightness and irony: through changes of context, endless multiplications and radical displacements, Pivi’s magical realism turns apparently impossible actions into disarmingly simple gestures.” - Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director Fondazione Trussardi, Milan.

Pivi is the recipient of several awards including the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale for the best National Pavilion (together with other artists) and the fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2011.
Her works are present in prestigious permanent collections including Guggenheim Museum, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome.
She has exhibited internationally at important museums and institutions including: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1999), P.S.1 MoMA, New York (2000, 2001, 2003, 2007), MACRO, Rome (2003, 2010), Brown University, Providence (2004), MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (2005), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2005), White Columns, New York (2005), MassArt - Massachusset College of Art, Boston (2006), Hayward Gallery, London (2005), Fondazione Trussardi, Milan (2006), Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2007), Portikus, Frankfurt (2008), Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2008), Tate Modern, London (2009), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2010), Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2012), Dallas Contemporary, Dallas (2016), The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2018), Museo MAXXI, Rome (2019), Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2020).

In 2021 Paola Pivi creates exclusively for Paradisoterrestre the wall lamp Let’em shine art and the carpet Universe, presented for the first time in the exhibition Rock the art at Paradisoterrestre gallery.

* Portrait ph. Hugo Glendinning