The Black Sea ^ whose millennial legends drift freely, sometimes running aground in the sand like shipwrecks. The Black Sea ^ a place of exile and refuge, a site of summer desires triggering atypical temporalities, an almost completely uncharted ecosystem hosting creatures hidden from our sight; a sea that has for centuries orchestrated the whims of artists trying to tame it.

The exhibition Aerosoli proposes a diffractive foray into the marine imaginary, starting from the double metaphor suggested by its very title. Aerosols are, first and foremost, the fine particles of salt, iodine, and minerals that waves spray into the air > a remedy prescribed to anyone looking to fortify their body. Like aerosols, the works presented across the rooms of Vila Catena come recommended for one's health, though not for the lungs, but for the soul and mind. They invite being inhaled, settling in fine layers inside us. But beware! As with any therapeutic treatment, its success depends on the frequency of exposure, as well as on each individual’s readiness to let themselves be permeated.

Aerosoli explores the coast during the peak season, but also far beyond it >> straying past its saturated, tourist-heavy summer imagery. The selection of works operates under the logic of climatotherapy: it tracks the micro-narratives, almost conspiratorial in nature, woven in the dead of summer, but also behind beaches hollowed out of people. It looks at local stories surrounding the Black Sea, hidden routines, traces, and absences that rewrite the coastline as a space for observation.

Dreamlike or subversive, articulated as mobile laboratories documenting (non)conforming bodies, the friction between the organic and the inorganic, frantic buzz and decay, the works trace an arc that bypasses centuries. The exhibition path arranges them to the cadence of the waves, with their tireless, unrelenting cyclicity.