Agostino Iacurci imagines a vibrant garden in Portrait Milano
Agostino Iacurci installs a contemporary botanical landscape with Arcipelago Botanico, a public installation in the courtyard of Portrait Milano curated by Valentina Ciarallo. Occupying the Renaissance courtyard of the former Archiepiscopal Seminary until August 31st, 2026, the project comprises eight monumental sculptures in painted steel and pigmented concrete, each reaching up to four meters in height, introducing an imagined ecosystem into one of Milan’s historic courtyards.
The installation draws inspiration from an 1895 lithograph depicting the Seminary courtyard as a flourishing garden before its current configuration, which the artist translates into a series of stylized botanical forms that occupy the piazza like fragments of an invented flora. Together they form what Iacurci describes as an ‘archipelago’, individual sculptural presences connected through rhythm and color.
all images by Lorenzo Palmieri
culture, landscape and architecture
Spread across the courtyard, the Italian artist’s sculptures resemble oversized flowering trees, cacti, palms, and thistles. Their silhouettes flatten leaves and branches into graphic profiles, recalling Iacurci’s long-standing visual language rooted in illustration and mural painting. Bright reds, violets, oranges, pinks, and greens stand in contrast to the restrained stone architecture surrounding them.
The installation is as much about movement through space as it is about individual objects. Visitors navigate between the sculptures much as they would a garden, encountering changing alignments between the colorful forms, mature trees, arcades, and open sky. Rising above visitors while remaining below the surrounding architecture, the works establish a new intermediate layer within the courtyard, activating an open public space that often functions primarily as a passage or hotel forecourt.
Agostino Iacurci installs a contemporary botanical landscape in the courtyard of Portrait Milano
a fictional ecology rooted in historical memory
Arcipelago Botanico proposes an alternative reading of place through imagination. The project treats historical memory as something capable of generating new landscapes. The botanical forms become contemporary markers of a vanished garden, inviting visitors to imagine what once occupied the site while accepting that memory inevitably transforms over time.
While the sculptures possess the physical weight of steel and concrete, their graphic profiles, vivid colors, and plant-like forms evoke growth, seasonal change, and living ecosystems. Arcipelago Botanico continues Iacurci’s ongoing exploration of nature as a symbolic language, creating a fictional garden using sculpture to reveal how landscapes can be rewritten.
the installation draws inspiration from an 1895 lithograph
introducing an imagined ecosystem into one of Milan’s historic courtyards