Giovanni Morbin
FUORI DALLE ORBITE
11.10.2025 – 01.02.2026
Solo exhibition
curated and artistically directed by Zeno Massignan
Habitat 83 –Casa Contemporanea
via Mantovana 83/e,
37137 Verona (VR)
Opening: October 11, from 11:30 AM to 6:00 PM
Live performance: 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Exhibition visitable by appointment by writing to: info@habitatottantatre.com
On Saturday, October 11 at 11:30 AM, Fuori dalle orbite opens at Habitat 83, the first of three exhibitions taking place across the city of Verona dedicated to the work of Giovanni Morbin. Curated by Zeno Massignan, the exhibition marks the beginning of a cycle that, in the coming months, will extend into the city’s civic archaeological museums, establishing a dialogue between the periphery and the center, between spaces of industrial archaeology and sites of historical memory, all connected through the language of contemporary art.
At the heart of the exhibition lies a universal tension: the need for control versus the desire for freedom. Faced with that which is formless, structureless, or without direction—emptiness, the shapeless, antimatter—humans tend to seek out support systems, patterns, and rules. It is an ancient, existential impulse: we often prefer to rely on systems that organize and protect us, even at the cost of giving up part of our autonomy. Giovanni Morbin’s artistic practice, active since 1978, also investigates this paradox: freedom exposes us to uncertainty, while control traps us in a merely apparent stability.
The exhibition begins with the concept of Antimatter, understood as a form of resistance to imposed order. The works on display—sculptures, drawings, photographs, and performative interventions—explore emptiness as a creative space and a site of fertile tension.
Some works result from direct action on materials: metallic objects are abraded until they produce incandescent scraps that are then hurled against a cube, incising and transforming it. Others recall molecular bonds, where form is defined precisely by the empty space that constitutes it. Photographs of launched metallic powders generate ephemeral, floating, almost cosmic images that question our relationship with what escapes the grasp of thought.
The title Fuori dalle orbite (“Out of Orbit”) refers to a deviation from known centers of gravity, but also to the loss (or rejection) of a central orientation. The work L.E.O., an acronym for Low Earth Orbit, is the exhibition’s focal point. Inspired by the artificial constellation of Starlink satellites, the piece reassembles archival photographs of 1950s pole vaulters, transforming them into an orbital map. Human silhouettes—some covered in f luorescent or silver pigment—emerge and disappear within a space divided between light and darkness, evoking the alternation of visible and invisible that characterizes orbiting bodies.
The act of jumping—suspended between levitation and fall—becomes a metaphor for the desire for freedom and its constant surveillance.
The image chosen for the exhibition poster reinforces this ambivalence: a figure caught between hanging and elevation. The body is poised at a critical point, where lightness brushes against gravity, and where freedom risks becoming constraint. It is precisely on this threshold that Morbin’s entire research unfolds.
On the day of the opening, the performance ROB, interpreted by Leonardo Avesani, will be presented. A man sits inside a white, minimal structure. His face is covered with a robber’s stocking mask: it is the only visible element, the only remaining trace.
ROB, oscillating between the English verb to rob and the proper name Robert, is an ironic reflection on the value of conceptual art and its monetization.
When thought becomes artwork, and artwork becomes a commodity, the line between creation and appropriation becomes thin: who is stealing what? And from whom?
The performance raises questions about the relationship between artist, audience, and market, suggesting that even the purest artistic gesture can be drawn into a logic of exchange and control.
Among the works featured is one of the most enigmatic devices in Morbin’s poetics: the Strumento a Perdifiato. It is a tool designed to make the act of speaking to oneself “precise,” a gesture often seen as marginal or pathological.
Morbin describes it as “a tool for cosmic communication”: talking to oneself becomes equivalent to speaking to the universe. If we are part of a unified body, every inner act is also a relation with the whole. The instrument erases the distance between voice and listening, highlighting the possibility of an expanded awareness that goes beyond the limits of the physical body.
Fuori dalle orbite is an invitation to become unaligned—to break away from the imposed geometries of control in order to explore alternative forms of existence, thought, and relationship. In a world that rewards efficiency, clarity, and transparency, this exhibition chooses the unfinished, the unstable, the invisible.
It is precisely where there is no form, where we falter, that space opens up for freedom
Giovanni Morbin / Vita
Giovanni Morbin was born in Valdagno (VI), on August 9, 1956. In 1982 he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, studying painting under Emilio Vedova. He lives and works in Cornedo Vicentino. Since 1978, his research has focused on behaviors, with performance becoming the ideal medium to express his ideas.
He is co-author and signatory of the poetic declaration Etica Espressiva Universale (Corriere della Sera, May 8, 1994), and in November 1995, he founded SUPERFICIE TOTALE, with his performances referred to as hybridizations.
In November 2023, he published Ozionismo. Manifesto orizzontale, which he presented in Vienna together with a series of tools and behaviors that express the manifesto itself.
His work has been presented in numerous museums and institutions including:
MART, Rovereto; MAGA, Gallarate; MMSU, Rijeka (HR); Centrale Fies, Dro (TN); BLM, Venice; Quadriennale, Rome; Museo Marino Marini, Florence; Museo di Villa Croce, Genoa; Istituto Svizzero, Rome; Palazzo Forti, Verona; Galleria Civica, Trento; Trafo, Szczecin (PL); Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (CH); Mach Gallery, Ljubljana; La Biennale, Venice; Triennale, Milan; Museo Archeologico, Bologna; Cloud 7, Brussels.
images / Giovanni Morbin
