‘Poetricks’, Calligaro’s nimble interventions, are small linguistic nudges that open a detour.
Discreet in their black-and-white economy and precise typography, they seem unwilling to demand attention, yet something tilts the moment you encounter them: a twist, a tiny verbal glitch that unsettles what you thought you recognised.
Their strength is in this understatement. Simple signals that make us pause for a moment and reconsider how we read, how we think, how we move through the day. The familiar appears slightly off-balance, and in that small misalignment a new reading becomes possible.
One Poetrick a Day extends this game in time. The exhibition unfolds as a sequence of soft disruptions: each day, a new Poetrick takes the place of the previous one, turning the act of visiting into part of the work. Nothing changes dramatically; the format, the scale, the monochrome clarity remain, but the meaning shifts, accumulating from one day to the next like a chain of subtle deviations.
The materialization of the Poetricks—normally carried out by collaborators such as publishers, manufacturers or curators—has, on this occasion, been entrusted to the gallery’s director, Oscar Florit. This shared exercise also involves the audience: the full arc of the exhibition reveals itself only to those willing to return.
Stefano Calligaro’s practice lies in this delicate play between language, form and collaboration. His Poetricks operate at the scale of a whisper, yet they carry the capacity to tilt perception, opening small but telling cracks in our everyday ways of looking.
–Text by: Madi Canals
About the artist
Stefano Calligaro (IT) works at the intersection of language, form, and collaboration. Since 2019 he has focused on Poetricks—concise textual gestures that quietly tilt meaning through minimal, precise interventions. He writes these linguistic scores but entrusts their material form to others, turning each work into a shared performance. His practice has been shown across Europe, including Kunstverein Langenhagen, Centre de la Gravure, MART/MAG, and Le Dictateur, with recurring projects at SABOT and SECONDroom. Recent solos include Invitro (Cluj-Napoca) and Spazio Leonardo (Milan). He is the author of several artist books, including Poetricks (Edition Taube) and Glitterature (SABOT).
