ALESSANDRO MORESCHINI
L'ornamento non è più un delitto
Museo Civico Medievale · Bologna
17 January — 22 March 2026
Curated by Raffaele Quattrone
In L’ornamento non è più un delitto, Alessandro Moreschini enters into dialogue with the collections of the Museo Civico Medievale in Bologna, creating a relationship between contemporary artistic practice and objects shaped by different histories, functions and symbolic systems.
The project begins with a reversal. More than a century after Adolf Loos’s celebrated Ornament and Crime, ornament is no longer understood as something superfluous to be removed, but as a form of thought: a language capable of revealing identities, relationships and ways of inhabiting the world.
Moreschini’s practice develops precisely within this territory. Through colour, pattern and meticulous manual intervention, everyday objects and familiar forms are transformed into singular presences. Ornament is not applied to the object as a decorative surface; it becomes part of its identity, activating a continuous exchange between body, object and environment.
At the Museo Civico Medievale, this research encounters a collection in which decoration has always carried meaning. Moreschini’s works are placed alongside sculptures, architectural fragments and historical artefacts without attempting to imitate them or compete with them. Instead, they establish unexpected correspondences across time.
The exhibition thus becomes an exercise in looking: ancient and contemporary objects illuminate one another, revealing affinities, contrasts and recurring gestures. What emerges is not a reconstruction of the past, but a space in which different temporalities coexist.
For Moreschini, ornament is ultimately a practice of care. To decorate means to devote time and attention to something, transforming it through a gesture that is simultaneously intimate and social.
Ornament is not an addition, but thought; not a mask, but a revelation.
