FIRST FRACTURE

最初の亀裂

19 02 2026

Concept by Lisa Galletti Senior Art Curator

There exists a moment, often imperceptible, in which what once appeared compact begins to crack, and the form, still intact on the surface, reveals an inner tension that can no longer be contained. The fracture does not erupt as a spectacular event; it seeps slowly, traversing matter, thought, and gesture, irreversibly altering the state of being and of the work. It is at this fragile point that consciousness ceases to adhere to a stable structure and begins to perceive the world as an unstable, shifting field, traversed by forces that push toward an inevitable transformation. The fracture does not coincide with destruction; it coincides with the opening of a threshold, with the loss of an equilibrium that makes passage into another configuration of existence possible.

In the language of science, a change of state is never a mere formal shift; it is a profound reorganization of matter, a process in which accumulated energy finds a new mode of expression and redefines the relationships between its parts. Gas condensing, liquid solidifying, matter crossing a critical threshold never returns identical to itself; it retains the memory of the tension that transformed it. Similarly, in the alchemical vision, the fracture represents the instant in which substance relinquishes its form to access deeper knowledge, where separation is not an end but a necessary condition for something else to emerge. Every authentic creation is born from this loss of compactness, from this silent yielding of form that accepts it can no longer suffice.

The artwork, in fact, situates itself precisely in this intermediate space—not as a finished object, but as a body traversed by living tension, as a surface that retains traces of what has broken and of what is still seeking to appear. The fracture becomes language, becomes internal rhythm, and a generative principle that acts both on matter and on the gaze of the observer. It is therefore not a matter of representing the rupture, but of inhabiting it and rendering it perceptible as a state of being, as a necessary condition for meaning to reemerge in a new form. In this unstable space, the identity of the work is formed and revealed, embracing its vulnerability as a form of knowledge and as a possibility for transformation. As Ilya Prigogine states, “when a system is far from equilibrium, new forms of order can emerge,” and it is precisely this distance that becomes the privileged territory of creation, the place where disorder is not negation but potential, compressed energy pressing to reorganize. The fracture is the point at which equilibrium is suspended, and the work enters a state of continuous becoming, in which nothing is definitively fixed, and every element retains a residual tension, ready to generate further transformations.

FIRST FRACTURE - 最初の亀裂 positions itself within this unstable space, recognizing in the fracture not a limit to overcome but a fertile condition to welcome and valorize. The exhibition is conceived as a space of traversal, where works are not presented as definitive answers or statements, but as open processes, as systems far from equilibrium that invite the viewer to confront their own perception of instability, mutation, and possibility. M.A.D.S. seeks to offer a place where transformation is neither spectacularized nor simplified, but allowed to emerge in its complexity, its slowness, in its inevitably incomplete dimension. In this sense, the exhibition becomes a field of resonance, a space where the fracture does not separate, but connects, allowing the works to exist as thresholds, as points of passage between what was and what is taking shape. Creation is thus returned to its deepest nature; not as a result, but as an act of exposure to the risk of change, as a conscious opening to a new order that can arise only when form accepts to crack.