MANIFESTO

THECA may be the smallest gallery in the world, measuring just 159 x 127 x 59 cm, but it will be open day and night, every single day of the year, in the heart of Milan, at 36 Via Federico Confalonieri, in Isola district.

Does 'small' necessarily mean 'limit'? Consciously chosen, the limit becomes a 'paradox'. And, at the same time, it presents itself as an opportunity, a limit that generates meaning. And yet, precisely as a paradox, it challenges common sense.

In a context of continuos, busy transit, THECA intends to present itself as an element of discontinuity: a 'moment of suspension'.

THECA's ambition is to become a sudden encounter, an unmediated encounter. A device of proximity in which the work of art becomes an authentic encounter.

In the jungle of new skyscrapers sprouting like mushrooms in Isola, THECA presents itself as a sort of small street treasure chest: a single work at a time, always site-specific, on a more or less monthly basis.

THECA was born from the idea of ​​architect Fabio Baccini and artist Ferruccio Ascari, who have their respective studios in that 1930s building In Via Confalonieri.

The aim is to encourage the artists involved to produce works conceived specifically for THECA's micro-space. These works will not be shown, as usual, only to "insiders," but will surprise passersby, offering themselves to the gaze of all the inhabitants of a constantly evolving neighborhood.

Public art, in short, without rhetoric or grandiloquence.