On Tuesday, 12 May 2026 from 6:00 to 9:00pm, Impermanent Structures opens at Ex Elettrofonica. This group exhibition features new works by Sergio Breviario, Agostino Iacurci, Elena Mazzi, Julie Polidoro and Guendalina Salini, all of whom engage with the time-honoured motif of the folding screen.
An architectural element, design object, work of art… the folding screen is an ambiguous and ever-changing subject that eludes definition in absolutes. Just as its static nature is called into question by the angle of the panels as they fold into one another, the materials used, the form chosen, and its symbolic baggage present us with trajectories that diverge radically from one another.
Nicholas Cullinan, curator of the exhibit Paraventi: Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries held at Fondazione Prada, spoke of the paradoxes that surround the history of folding screens: “A history of cultural migration (from East to West), of hybridisation (between different art forms and functions) and of what is concealed and revealed. (…) A history of liminal objects and liminality itself, in a process of overcoming the rigid distinctions and hierarchies between the various disciplines of art and architecture, interior decoration, and design.”
The title, Impermanent Structures, refers to the provisional nature of the limit created by the folding screen. In his 1979 work The Postmodern Condition, Jean François Lyotard speaks of a necessary boundary provided that its nature evolves from a rigid barrier to a porous, relational line. And here, even philosophically, things become complicated. The need for a limit in a fluid and moving age has correspondence on the relational level as well, where the boundary is a place of contact and division at the same time.
Therefore, in postmodernity, the limit is not an insurmountable barrier, but a point of negotiation and interaction between the Self and the environment. The folding screen is a perfect example of this novel condition, a necessary and provisional boundary that can be continuously removed and reconfigured.
IMPERMANENT STRUCTURES
Sergio Breviario, Agostino Iacurci, Elena Mazzi, Julie Polidoro, Guendalina Salini
In collaboration with Stefano Marolla
12 MAY – 26 JUNE 2026
Ex Elettrofonica, Vicolo di Sant’Onofrio 10-11 Rome
OPENING: TUESDAY, 12 MAY 2026 6:00-9:00pm
