Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani - DSL Studio
The Gallery
GALERA SAN SODA is a contemporary art gallery based in Milan, Italy.Its core exhibition space consists of three large windows opening onto the salmon pink and blue tile foyer of Palazzo INA, designed in 1957 by the visionary rationalist architect Piero Bottoni at the height of the Italian postwar economic boom. The gallery takes its name from the Italian word galera which translates as jail or prison and is derived from the historic Genoese Galea or the Venetian Garea: a ship or boat propelled solely or chiefly by oars in use in the Mediterranean Sea from the ancient Greeks to as late as the 19th century. The rowers who propelled the boat forward were typically sentenced to undertake this task, effectively prisoners and sailors.
The ArchitecturePALAZZO INA a 1957 eighteen floor, hundred and eighty apartment unit wide monolith was constructed at the height of the progressive architectural thinking of the Italian postwar economic boom. Its architect, Piero Bottoni, envisioned a fair and self-sustainable high rise with shops and workshops on the ground floor and in the basement units, as well as a large open-air communal recreational area on the nineteenth floor roof terrace. Palazzo Ina shines candid against the fog and pollution of the Bassa - the industrious flatlands of Lombardy. At a fair sixty-four meters above ground, and stretching fourteen meters in width, Palazzo Ina outdoes Gio Ponti’s Rai Italian National Radio & Television headquarters and broadcasting tower in Milan.
The Project Space was founded by Steno Branca di Romanico in 2018 entrenched in this monument to a bygone progressive Italy, the gallery officially debuts on March 2019. Galera San Soda is both a physical and theoretical place where artists who feel trapped in their careers allowed to break free from what is expected from and of them. One must accept a higher degree of uncertainty, for there is no safety or guaranteed reward in these endeavours in the Galera the artist is master and slave of his device. The objective is to incite a genuine body of work that follows the artist’s inner yearnings rather than the constant outer ego-search for approval and its fleeting promises of rewards in the form of vacuous spotlights and accolades.
