Centre d’édition contemporaine Geneva

Costanza Candeloro
Different kinds of wants

From September 18 to November 7, 2025

Finissage, Friday, November 7, 2025, at 5 PM

C – Clinical
N – Notes
E – Economy
I – Illusion

Costanza Candeloro’s works, informed by intellectual, poetic and literary references, develop like stages in a thought process in motion. Between life and work, body and image, production and reproduction, this movement deconstructs the internal hierarchies of signs and identifications.

Rather than focusing on a single technique or medium, the artist’s practice involves the circulation, dissemination and transition from one medium to another. Playing on these shifts, the work creates the conditions for an active and open reception which runs counter to the trends of the cultural industry and property.

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For her first solo exhibition in a Swiss institution, the artist presents a coherent collection of new works produced for the occasion, as well as an edition of five printed ceramics*. In Different kinds of wants, she alters seemingly innocuous objects and picks apart the illusory anchoring of value in things. Through her reworking of shoes, jumpers, scratch cards and cosmetics, the artist condemns the mechanisms of seduction of supposedly unique products.

The corrections conflate the techniques of art with those of commerce. In their passion for form, both rely on appearance. The magic of light, whose mystery remains intact: “At first glance, a commodity appears to be something trivial and self-explanatory. But for the artist, it is a very complex thing, full of metaphysical subtleties and theological nuances.”Far removed from any contemporary sophistication, with a ancient presence, the works open up to time and the necessity of production.

Costanza Candeloro (1990; Bologna, Italy) lives and works in Paris. She graduated from HEAD (Geneva University of Art and Design) in 2020 and is represented by the Martina Simeti Gallery, Milan. The artist will open an exhibition at the Swiss Institute in New York at the end of September 2025. Recent exhibitions include: Tout le temps de vie est temps de travail, Sihl Delta, Zurich (2024); Possessed is The Style, Austellungsraum Friedensgasse, Zurich (2024); C&G, with Gritli Faulhaber, Swiss Institute, Milan (2023); ENVY & GRATITUDE, Martina Simeti, Milan (2022); My Skin-care, My Strength, ICA Milano, Milan (2022); Sweet Days of Discipline, La Plage, Paris (2022). With Francesca Ciccone, she also runs Licit Illicit Bookshop, a mobile book platform that explores the connections between rarity and radicalism. 

Costanza Candeloro’s exhibition is supported by Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Foundation and of the Department of Culture and digital Transition of the City of Geneva.

Timothée Calame
Gymnique Incontinentale

Costanza Candeloro
Glam Proof