Davide Allieri

47°24’35’’N / 9°44’20’’E

Press Preview                         
Wednesday, 11 March 2026, 10:30 a.m.

Opening
Thursday, 12 March 2026, 7 p.m.

Artist Talk
Friday, 13 March 2026, 2 p.m.

After-Work-Tour
Thursdays at 6 p.m., 23 April and 28 May 2026

Exhibition Duration        
13 March – 21 June 2026
Tue – Sun, 10-18 Uhr

47°24’35’’N / 9°44’20’’E – coordinates that mark a real location while at the same time resembling an encrypted message. Whoever follows them arrives at Kunstraum Dornbirn. Yet what unfolds here is not a clearly mappable site, but rather a liminal state. Davide Allieri transforms the historic industrial hall into the point of departure for an enigmatic environment: in the pale haze of a hostile landscape, a luminous portal appears in the form of a large circular sculpture – a possible passage, a technological relic, or a metaphysical sign. Nearby rises a figure approximately four metres long, reminiscent of a drone or a mech. Countless cables run through the space, stretching across floor and architecture to form a network of technical infrastructures whose function remains unclear. Loose ends suggest energy and connection, yet nothing appears to be activated. Emanating from the portal, a pervasive sound settles over the scene like an invisible layer. Sound, light and darkness intensify the feeling of a permanent in-between – a condition in which possibilities remain open yet undetermined. Are we at the beginning of a new epoch – or at the end of a former one?

The immersive installation evokes the atmosphere of an apocalyptic science-fiction narrative, but without narrative clarity. Reality and fiction, past and future, collapse and possibility do not exist as opposites but as overlapping layers. Allieri does not present a conventional dystopian space; he is not interested in romantic ruins or familiar end-of-the-world clichés. What stands at the centre is not catastrophe itself, but what remains afterwards: a present in suspension. Forms persist, yet their original function appears suspended. The bodies are absent. Movement is halted – and yet physically perceptible: Francesco Peccolo develops a specially composed sound design, a low-frequency, vibrating drone interrupted by metallic resonances and fragmented impulses that recall distant signals or the echo of an autonomous machine. The sound oscillates between mechanical precision and atmospheric vastness. It creates an acoustic suspension in which time stretches, orientation dissolves, and space becomes perceptible as a resonating body of potential that evokes uncertain expectation. Installation, sculpture, architecture and sound intertwine into a dense, bodily experience.

What manifests within this environment can be read as the trace of a broken promise. The grand narratives of modern progress have lost their binding force – and with them the memory of the origins of those visions of the future that once provided orientation. A present unfolds that lacks any clear direction. The future loses its function as a projection surface for hope or action; it remains indeterminate. For Allieri, this constellation resonates with Marc Augé’s concept of the non-place, which he shifts into a speculative dimension. His spaces are precisely located and yet neither temporally fixed nor narratively conclusive. Time does not appear cyclical but linearly extended – an elongation of the present without clearly defined origin and without discernible goal. Within this non-time and non-place, a peculiar tension emerges: one finds oneself on a threshold, neither completely inside nor outside the event. It is precisely here that Allieri positions his work – not as dystopia, but as a simulacrum of a possible reality, subtly displaced and decoupled.

The entire environment is conceived specifically for the architecture of Kunstraum Dornbirn, which is shaped by the history of the Vorarlberg metal industry. It forms a resonant framework for Allieri’s narrative, in which the past remains present as a material trace. The monumental sculptures are fabricated from fibreglass – the artist’s preferred material. What is decisive is not only their aesthetic appearance but their inner condition. Allieri conceives his sculptures as shells, as containers. They are not solid but hollow. Within this emptiness lies their conceptual core. A solid sculpture remains an object; an empty one contains space. It preserves enclosure and protection while carrying both memory and potential. Fibreglass allows for extremely thin yet resilient surfaces. The bodies appear technically precise and almost ghostlike – present and yet dematerialised. Form endures, while the interior appears as an indeterminate field of possibility. Formally, the works oscillate between machine, organism and architectural fragment. They are at once alluring and uncanny, beautiful and threatening, dead and yet charged with latent energy. Their aesthetic draws on references to animated, human-operated drones as well as fragments of contemporary motorcycle and car body parts. Through spatial collage, dysfunctional structures emerge that resemble autonomous creatures. They point to an invisible human presence – a subject that is absent and only reimagined in the act of observation.

By shielding the space from daylight and installing an artificial atmosphere of light and sound, Allieri fundamentally transforms the hall. From the springlike municipal garden, one steps into another sphere – perhaps into an “afterwards” whose meaning remains open. The precise coordinates of the exhibition title anchor this environment firmly in reality, while simultaneously withdrawing it from any clear temporal determination. Whether the portal marks the beginning of a new narrative or the echo of a fallen civilisation remains undecided. The exhibition deliberately leaves this question to its visitors – confronting them with perhaps the most fundamental one of all: What does the future mean when it has lost its direction and the memory of its own promise?

Davide Allieri (born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1982) graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan, where he now lives and works. His works have been shown at numerous institutions and exhibition spaces, including the Kunstmuseum, Den Haag (“New New Babylon – Visions for Another Tomorrow”, 2025), Triennale Milano (“After All”, solo, 2024), the Galerie Hubert Winter in Vienna (“CELLS”, solo, 2023), the Palazzo Monti in Brescia (“HOLDER”, solo, 2023), the House, Berlin (“Very friendly”, 2023), the DAS exhibition space in Milan (“BUIA 1:31”, 2019) and in projects at the Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Gallery in Berlin (“NEXUS”, 2024). In 2024, he received the viennacontemporary | Bildrecht SOLO Award together with the Galerie Hubert Winter.

Curator: Thomas Häusle, Text: Sina Wagner