Immagini nello spazio

On Saturday, 24 January 2026 at 11:00 AM, the Sabe Foundation for Art presents Immagini nello spazio, a solo exhibition by the artist Nataly Maier (Munich, 1957), curated by Cristina Casero, and realized with the patronage of the Municipality of Ravenna and the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna – Ravenna Campus, in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna.

Since the late 1980s, Nataly Maier has been experimenting with a highly original form of expression: photo-sculpture, an effective approach for juxtaposing the photographic image with the “form” of its subject. From the very beginning, the artist has explored the expressive possibilities of the medium, addressing—with a conceptual approach that is flexible and often infused with irony—one of the central issues of representation, including photography: the two-dimensionality of the image and its complex relationship with reality. As this exhibition demonstrates, Maier has practiced photography and painting over the decades, always aiming to examine, from different perspectives, the intricate connection between image and reality.

The title of the exhibition, Immagini nello spazio, highlights the artist’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between two and three dimensions: overcoming the two-dimensionality of the photographic image by giving it a physical extension that corresponds to the object itself. Examples of this practice include works such as Rotating Tree (1991), Citrus, Orange, Lemon (1992), and Sea in a Box (1994). A reflection on the objecthood of photography is central to works such as Photo-Sculpture with Willow (1994) and Cobblestones (1995), where images envelop three-dimensional solids inspired by constructive principles. The exhibition also includes several diptychs juxtaposing black-and-white photography with monochrome painting, designed to reveal the illusory nature of photography when contrasted with aniconic surfaces.

Nataly Maier, born in 1957 in Munich, studied at the Leibniz Kolleg in Tübingen and attended the Photography School in Munich. In 1982, she moved to Milan, where she worked as a photographer. From the late 1980s, she began a research project on the memory of color, adopting the diptych format to juxtapose photography and monochrome painting, later integrating drawing and writing. In parallel, she pursued ways to transcend photography as a two-dimensional image, employing three-dimensional supports to give photography a sculptural value. Her first solo exhibition was held at Galleria L’Attico in Rome in 1992. She has exhibited in numerous public and private institutions, including Goethe Loft, Lyon (2000), Villa Romana, Florence (2001), Fondazione Antonio Calderara, Vacciago (2015), Soeffker Gallery, Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota (2017), Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Ireland (2018), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2018), Villa Olmo, Como (2022), Fondazione Filiberto Menna, Rome (2023), as well as in numerous galleries in Italy and Germany. She won the Michetti Prize in 2018 and the Arteam Cup for painting in 2022. She lives and works between Milan and Starnberg.

Cristina Casero teaches Theories and Techniques of Photography and Contemporary Art History at the University of Parma, where she is an associate professor. From 2022 to 2025, she directed CSAC, the Center for Studies and Archive of Communication. Her research initially focused on Italian visual culture of the postwar period and 19th-century Italian sculpture, with particular interest in the connections between visual production and the political, social, and civic issues of the time. Her investigations over the past forty years continue along the same line, concentrating on photographic imagery, with particular attention to conceptual approaches.