The works on show engage the entire monumental complex, from the interior spaces of Le Murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea to the public spaces of the complex such as the facade, the fountain in Piazza Madonna della Neve, the interior of the Semiottagono.

The former cells will host a series of site-specific installations that invite the visitor to reflect on the concepts of confinement and meditation.

The works – conceived by the artist to intentionally make use of ‘hard’ materials such as nails and steel wool, or to scratch and ‘mark’ the walls of the complex – are founded on actions of chromatic matrix and others of materic origin, consistently with the lengthy and structured path through art that has characterised his entire production. His actions in/on the spaces thus become conceptual markers along a course of serried, highly coherent research that doubles back to experimental practices first launched in the Seventies, now presented in a new guise and with an authentic odour, rigorously measured against the spaces.

The exhibition also presents two never-before-seen Polaroid cycles, one dedicated to Le Murate, a space of isolation and reflection; the other to the Arno river, an open, changeling ambience, remindful of a world and a life outside the walls. ‘What most struck me was the aura of the site, where the stone walls carry evident signs of many passages, of cloistered nuns and prisoners,’ Paolo Masi has said. ‘With the Polaroid shots, I have tried to render this emotional visibility. The exhibition centres on pointing up the peculiarities of this space, so different from a gallery or a museum, which, as a production site, allows the imagination room to express itself freely and totally. On my very first visit here, I decided to give concrete form to feelings and emotions on two different planes: the dramatic, on the third floor, where the cells are linked by an extremely coercive history; while on the lower floor, the incised white of the wall, the two large cartons and the three folded papers suggest a geometry that is alternative to the sense of physical ‘enclosure’ that was the original function of the site.’