NIGHTS OUT

KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS presents NIGHTS OUT, Anna Franceschini’s first institutional solo exhibition in Vienna, curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini and Ilaria Gianni. In her practice, Anna Franceschini explores the multiple ways of displaying commodities. Underlying her observation of reality is cinema through its constituent elements: movement, light, framing, and editing. Performances, Xerox copies, kinetic sculptures, “bachelor(ette) machines” – which inject femininity into the Duchampian idea of apparatus– are, for the artist, “a cinema by other means.” Reversing the ends of the discussion about “cinema as machine,” she redirects the gaze toward the hypothesis of a “machine as cinema.” By creating sculptures intended as moving images, she turns commodities into quasi-living beings: devices whose subjectivity emerges only within a mise-enscène. Three dancing machines haunt KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS’ blacked-out space, activating an array of choreographies. Human presence is signified by flowing wigs, which move seductively, automatically, disturbingly, or even pathetically, in compliance with the engineered artifacts. Constructed as a theatrical body, NIGHTS OUT’s characters invite the public to consider how objects can take on meanings beyond the function for which they are designed. Following a sequence of incessant, repetitive, overwhelming, and weary gestures, Franceschini’s animated beings seem on the verge of becoming, constantly renegotiating their purpose. The sculptures appear as unsettling traces of a relentless drive for productivity that erodes both economic structures and interpersonal bonds. The exhibition becomes a stage where the existence of technical agents and the fictive flicker of life are equally expressed. NIGHTS OUT unveils the effects woven by capitalism, in an everlasting spin between labor and desire. The sculptures call for a certain pressure to perform. Enhanced by a ferocious exuberance of movement, as much as an inevitable exhaustion, they expose that the spectacle presented by the artist is not a dreamscape, but a scenario we can relate to. NIGHTS OUT at KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS is the first solo presentation of Anna Franceschini’s work in Austria. Premiering together with curated by, the gallery-led festival, fostering international critical discourse and opening on September 5, 2025, it can be visited during Vienna Contemporary (11th – 14th of September 2025), with curator-led tours available during its opening hours. The publication Machines Wear Costumes, edited by Attilia Fattori Franchini and Ilaria Gianni, reflects on Franceschini’s oeuvre and will be published in 2025 by LENZ PRESS. The project is supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024), which aims to promote Italian contemporary art worldwide. Special thanks to Galleria VISTAMARE, Simone Battisti, Leonardo Caldonazzo, Margherita Castiglioni, Andrea Fustinoni, Anna Maria Giallombardo and Fabiana Novembre for their support on the realization of this project.