Luca Monterastelli lives between Milan and Forlimpopoli. His practice spans sculpture and installation, investigating the apparatuses that produce images of legitimacy: monuments, idols, and the forms through which power gives itself a body. Where power proceeds through accumulation, adding matter and filling space, his work proceeds through subtraction: casts, tears, imprints, and the void that records a body that has passed through and disappeared. Narrative enters his work not as storytelling but as an act of ordering: the texts accompanying the works do not describe them, but instead determine their arrangement, and each exhibition constructs its own internal logic through which the works coexist.
His solo exhibitions include Notte di costruzione, Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan (2025); La città nuova, Cremona Contemporanea, curated by Rossella Farinotti, Cremona (2025); Storia di un onestuomo, curated by Alessandro Rabottini, Fondazione del Monte, Bologna (2024); Sticks and Stones, a Prologue, Keteleer Gallery, Antwerp (2023); Weightless, Lia Rumma Gallery, Naples (2020); Old Masters, Keteleer Gallery, Antwerp (2020); and To Build a Fire, Lia Rumma Gallery, Milan (2017).
His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including The Space Between Us, Keteleer Gallery, Antwerp (2024); Neighbours, curated by M. Grunewald, Rubenskasteel, Zemst (2023); Premio Termoli LXIII, curated by Cristiana Perrella, MACTE, Termoli (2023); HORST: State of Play, curated by Stand van Zaken, ASIAT, Vilvoorde (2023); Afterimage, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Alessandro Rabottini, MAXXI L'Aquila (2022); Prospettiva Arte Contemporanea, Gallerie d'Italia, Milan (2019); Black Hole, curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Sara Fumagalli, GAMeC, Bergamo (2018); Ennesima, curated by Vincenzo de Bellis, Triennale Milano (2015); and Codice Italia, Italian Pavilion, the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by Vincenzo Trione (2015).
He has also taken part in residency programmes including Triangle France, Marseille (2011); Résidences Secondaires, Centre d'art contemporain Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux (2012); and HIAP, Helsinki (2014). He was awarded the Premio Matteo Visconti di Modrone at miart (2024) and received the Fondazione Fiera Milano Acquisition Fund (2018). Since 2019, his works have been included in the CELINE Art Project.
His research is documented in the monograph Pardon Façade, edited by Alessandro Rabottini, with essays by Martin Germann and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, published by Lenz Press, Milan (2023). In the same year, his work was included in Strata. Arte italiana dal 2000, edited by Vincenzo de Bellis and Alessandro Rabottini, published by Lenz Press with the support of the Italian Council (10th edition).
Inspired by an imagined episode from the life of Bernard de Mandeville, this installation reflects on the fragile relationship between power, accident, and consequence. A minor domestic incident — a spilled cup of tea, an interrupted gesture, an expression fixed in a portrait — becomes the starting point for a
“A little over a year ago, I was on my way to see Morandi at Palazzo Reale when I found myself circling around the Napoleonic centerpiece. There was something eluding me, something that surfaced from its material but did not immediately return to the eye. The mystery did not lie
Lia Rumma Gallery is pleased to announce Luca Monterastelli’s participation in Cremona Contemporanea | Art Week 2025, taking place from 24 May to 2 June 2025. Cremona Contemporanea is a ten-day program dedicated to visual arts that, through installations, exhibitions, talks, and events, turns the city of Cremona into a
The jury of the second edition of the Matteo Visconti di Modrone Prize at MIART 2024 unanimously awards the artist Luca Monterastelli (Forlimpopoli, 1983), recognising the value of his many years of research in sculptural practice. The jury awards the prize in the conviction that the confrontation with a material
On the occasion of Arte Fiera Bologna and the inauguration of Luca Monterastelli’s installation at the Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, the National Association of Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries has awarded the gallery owner Lia Rumma, one of the most authoritative figures on the Italian art scene, who has
Luca Monterastelli is delighted to present his upcoming individual installation, ‘Storia di un onest’uomo’, which will take place in Bologna at the Oratorio San Filippo Neri. The exhibition is curated by Alessandro Rabottini and is realised thanks to the collaboration with the Lia Rumma Gallery and the Fondazione del Monte.
