On the occasion of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi exhibition Reaching for the Stars. From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (4 March – 18 June 2023), Manifattura Tabacchi hosts a special exhibition dedicated to Katja Novitskova in collaboration with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. From April 12, the Manifattura Tabacchi Factory welcomes the works of the internationally renowned Estonian artist, which offer a reflection on the value of images in the contemporary world in an original dialogue between art, science and ecology.

The Reaching for the Stars exhibition presents a selection of works by the most important international contemporary artists: a journey through over 70 works created by some of the most important contemporary artists exhibited at Palazzo Strozzi in collaboration with the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation.

Katja Novitskova’s exhibition is part of the Fuorimostra di Palazzo Strozzi and renews the collaboration between Manifattura Tabacchi and Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, inaugurated in 2020 on the occasion of the Tomás Saraceno exhibition. Aria, with an in-depth analysis of the philosophy of the Aerocene which develops projects of ecological sensitivity for a new ethical collaboration with the atmosphere and the environment.

The Fuorimostra, in its new exhibition space in Building 11, will be hosted in the Factory, an avant-garde, creative and productive workplace inside the former Florentine cigar factory. This project is signed by the Florentine studio q-bic, flanked by landscape architect Antonio Perazzi. The Factory, this brand new space at the Manifattura Tabacchi,  becomes the scenario in which Katie Novitskova’s works come together in their surreal and ironic dialogue, made of participation and alienation which creates a dissonant exhibition. In her photo-sculptures, which are part of the Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, the artist reproduces images of animals such as a colorful ibis, a polar bear with a flushed face, a cat or three anthills all collected from the Internet and replicated in large format on shaped aluminum plates and cardboard panels. Novitskova’s intent is to demonstrate how our perception of space has been altered by rapid technological development and how the boundary between the natural world and its digital version is dissolving. Before the artist took possession of them, photographs transformed these animals into flat, immaterial images, but through her work Novitskova gave them back their three dimensions. However the audience’s photographs will bring them back to their inevitable starting condition. The result is a continuous exchange between real and virtual, within an ideally never-ending cycle.

On the occasion of the opening of Katja Novitskova, Manifattura Tabacchi invites you to visit the work spaces, ateliers and shops that make up the lively community of the Factory, the new creative and productive workplace in Florence.