Daniele Formica
in dialogue with Joseph Beuys
15 March–6 September 2026
action Siberian Symphony (1963). An accompanying catalogue will reflect the dialogical form of the
This research-based exhibition brings the contemporary performative artistic practice of Daniele Formica (born 1996, Perugia) into dialogue with the historical position of the internationally successful German artist Joseph Beuys (born 1921, Krefeld, died 1986, Düsseldorf), who died in 1986.
The Museum Schloss Moyland has invited Daniele Formica to approach the Joseph Beuys Archive and the extensive collection from his own artistic perspective, using relevant search terms and themes, during numerous stays on site. For the exhibition, Formica will produce new site-specific artworks, including text-based works, a video performance, a large-format ready-made, and a performance installation that responds to Joseph Beuys' exhibition.
Co-curated by Daniele Formica and Antje-Britt Mählmann
JANUA: Janua is a large-scale ready-made: the wall structure and door of my studio in The Hague, re-installed in the exhibition space of the Museum Schloss Moyland. “Janua” is Latin noun for door. It connects to the daily function of transit as the repetition of the act of going through. The façade, like the threshold of a temple, marks the edge, entrance and exit, between private and public worlds, the artist studio as inner space and its negative as the outer space. It is a permeable membrane incarnating separation and connection, inside and outside, verso and recto. The façade was built in 2022. In 2023 I painted on it, with pink paint, the mural that recites: “MAY YOU STAND AGAINST” and lists many words that we may stand against , or that the studio façade may face in the future. These words, written as a stream of consciousness, are meant to inflate the structure of the list to enlarge the possible at the threshold of the infinity outside the list. So ultimately stands many threshold in Janua: a physical one, a linguistic one, a symbolic one, a personal one,… converging in the one between fiction and reality as the meeting place of museum and studio.
VERSO LISTS: This is a list of meanings of the Italian word “Verso”, which is then translated in English and German, keeping the same organization of the original Italian list. The Italian word “Verso” has meanings that involve: poetry (as the verse in a poem), animal cries, direction in space and time, the back of something (recto/verso); and it is used to assemble many words such as: universe, averse and even diverse.
In classical mechanics, “Verso” is used to describe where the vector force is pointing towards, expressed with the symbol of the arrow point.
This originates from Latin “Vertere” which makes me think of the turning point of the plough in the field.
All these meaning of VERSO seem to point at something that has to do with trying to express our experience beyond a line, time... our exact condition of being experiencing, through consciousness, the one thing following the other. This VERSO is itself the wording of the human condition of consciousness, of the inability to escape the interlinking of physical interactions, the necessity of placing one’s presence within a line and the urge to escape it.
DANCING THE SYMPHONY: EVOLUTION, REVOLUTION, SPIN! SPIN! SPIN!: This work responds to the action Siberian Symphony (1963) by Joseph Beuys. I accepted quite literally to dance the Symphony, interpreting this invitation to dance by Beuys himself, responding to the elements in the original action as a 2026 dancer, placing the creation of this dance-based work between re-enactment and enactment; between reading and re-writing a compossible score: ultimately to point at the deeper possibility of agency and collaborative authorship we hold onto through life, space and signification, between a past composer and an Occurrent present-dancer.
The dance is divided in two parts, corresponding to two phases and songs: first the Messe Des Pauvres by Erik Satie, then The Poor People of Paris by Les Baxter. These two songs/music have the same distance in time between Beuy’s action and my dance. The first dance involves a series of movements working at the edge and above the piano surface, without touching it, as to channel my weight on this piece to transform it into a dance floor. The second part involves the spinning, as I wear the transparent cape, making it flap in the air as my body spins, spins, spins.