MICHELE TOCCA | ENDLESS SUMMER

From May 16 to July 1, 2026, the Magazzino del Sale in Cervia hosts the second edition of ENDLESS SUMMER, a three-year exhibition cycle (2025–2027) conceived by MAGMA APS. By exploring the utopian idea of an endless summer as an evocative and narrative device, the project emerges from the desire to experiment with new forms of cooperation tied to individual curatorial practices, imagining the exhibition as a jam session in which every critical and authorial specificity is enhanced without rivalry or competition.

ENDLESS SUMMER thus takes shape as a shared experience built on dialogue and exchange. Over the course of the three-year project, a group of curators from different generations — each with their own sensibilities and research paths — invite emerging and established visual artists active on the Italian and international scene to reflect on summer as a possible poetic suggestion. A season in which time seems to stretch out, light reshapes rhythms and spaces, and new perceptions, visions, and desires dynamically take form.

The project moves within this suspended dimension, evoked more as a mental state than as a mere climatic phenomenon: summer becomes a perceptual threshold where the intensity of experience intertwines with its own transience, and the vitality of the present is already accompanied by melancholy for the inevitable end of the season.

The title of the project is borrowed from a 1960s surf documentary by Bruce Brown, in which the director follows a group of surfers traveling between the two hemispheres in search of a perpetual summer. ENDLESS SUMMER embraces its paradox, recalling the image of an everlasting season: an unattainable ideal, an almost utopian dimension.

The works selected by the curators — ranging from painting to video, sculpture to photography, and performance — enter into dialogue through free dynamics of juxtaposition and resonance. The result is a living and organic space of exchange, developed in a climate of mutual trust among the participating artists and the curators collaborating on the project.

At the end of the three-year exhibition cycle, a publication will be produced gathering all the works presented throughout the editions, documenting the various thematic approaches and curatorial trajectories that emerged over the course of the project.

This thematic cycle has been conceived by MAGMA specifically for Cervia and realized with the support of the municipality, with the aim of fostering interest in contemporary art within the local area and contributing to the enhancement of the cultural, social, and anthropological specificities of the community hosting the project. The choice of theme also stems from the desire to highlight the city’s strong connection to the summer season — a poetic trigger still capable of generating surprising imaginaries.

ENDLESS SUMMER is an invitation to experience the exhibition as one experiences summer itself: with the awareness of an intensity that is fully present, yet destined to dissolve.

Following the success of the 2025 edition, the artistic direction of the 2026 edition of MAGMA is entrusted to Gioele Melandri and Alex Montanaro.

This year as well, the selection of curators is based on the idea of giving voice both to those working within museums, galleries, and cultural institutions, and to those involved in independent and non-profit projects. In this spirit of ongoing collaboration and exchange, several project spaces active across Italy have been invited to participate, including Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio (Bologna), Fertile (Brescia), and Toast Project (Florence). Also involved are curators Viola Emaldi, Antonio Grulli, Milovan Farronato, Cornelia Mattiacci, and Saverio Verini.

Artists: Riccardo Baruzzi, Sergio Breviario, Stefania Carlotti, Anna Capolupo, Martina Cassatella, Maurizio Cattelan, Paolo Chiasera, Cuoghi Corsello, Sabine Delafon, Gabriele Ermini, Joana Escoval, Massimiliano Fabbri, Flavio Favelli, Luca Federico Ferrero, Francesco Gennari, Luigi Ghirri, Nan Goldin, Alessandra Giovannoni, Guido Guidi, Lin Hóng Jìng, Lucia Leuci, Goshka Macuga, Andrea Magnani, Tess Mallavergne, Davide Mancini Zanchi, Eleonora Mariani, Eva Marisaldi, Rachele Maistrello, Matisse Mesnil, Jimmy Milani, Mattia Moreni, Chiara Peruch, Alessandro Piangiamore, Paola Pivi, Luca Poncetta, Giulia Poppi, Laure Prouvost, Riccardo Previdi, Marinella Senatore, Vincenzo Simone, Roberta Silva, Tommaso Silvestroni & Mihály Mór Kovács, Michele Tocca, Gloria Tomasini, Vinicius Jayme Vallorani, Giuditta Vettese, Francesco Vezzoli, Venerdisabato, Andy Warhol, Giovanni Wetzl, Shafei Xia.