"The exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca brings together around fifty of the artist's most significant sculptures and installations. It examines the artist’s conceptual and formal approach to space, exploring the ways it engages with the perception of those who inhabit it. Emphasis is placed on Fabro’s investigations into perception and spatial experience, initiated in the 1960s, tracing their development from his early experiments with mirroring surfaces through the following fifty years. This evolution culminated in increasingly complex architectural structures and spaces—often made of paper—which the artist referred to as "habitats": ideal environment, either autonomous/self- contained or integrated into existing spaces, conceived to house and activate his works.
The notion of habitat runs throughout Fabro’s practice from the 1960s onwards, although the artist only began using the term in the 1980s. For Fabro, a habitat combines materiality and artisanal elements with theoretical and philosophical depth. The concept draws on its dual etymological roots: the Latin verb habito, meaning to inhabit or to dwell, and the noun habitus, referring to outward appearance, bodily form, or clothing. Within this framework, the habitat becomes a space to be traversed and inhabited, as well as a device that shapes perception and fosters relationships. By bringing together sculpture, architecture, and painting, Fabro constructs pathways, perspectives, and architectural elements that reconfigure the perception of space."
Fiammetta Griccioli, Roberta Tenconi, Vicente Todolí and Silvia Fabro, Curators