Magazzeno was founded in 2016 in the Darsena area of Ravenna, in a former sulphur warehouse from which it takes its name (Magazzeno in Italian means warehouse). A few years later, it moved into a historic building in the city centre, dating back to 1836, where modern and contemporary art coexist, enhancing one another. The history of the house that hosts the gallery intertwines with the energy emanating from the artworks, which in turn intersects with the viewer’s gaze and thoughts. The space is no longer the aseptic setting of an inhospitable white cube, but becomes a protagonist in a journey where presence is both necessary and complementary.

In 2024, Magazzeno continued its journey and arrived in the heart of Bologna, just five minutes from Piazza Maggiore, in a large space that also houses a bar, a symbol of conviviality and gathering, elements that have always been fundamental to the gallery.

The following year, its founder, Alessandra Carini, returned to curatorial and project-based work, also growing tired of an increasingly old and self-referential art market, with its ridiculous and anachronistic power dynamics. Alessandra believes that art, artists, curators, and the art world as a whole can do more, and must do more. They must take positions, overcome the limitations imposed by the market, and begin to change a system that no longer works, one step at a time. She finds exclusivity in art offensive, she rejects it, and keeps it at a distance, in favour of a long-term approach that does not conform to the laws of productivity, but instead points towards a process aimed at creating project-based works that respond, resist, and speak to our time, as well as to the future.

Magazzeno is a shifting, evolving gallery-project, constantly in motion and always in search of meaning: the kind of meaning that gives shape to things, concepts, and actions.