Galleria Raffaella Cortese opened its first exhibition space with a solo show dedicated to Franco Vimercati in 1995. Based in Milan’s Città Studi district since its inception, the gallery has a widespread spatiality thanks to its three spaces in Via A. Stradella, 7, 1 and 4. From 2022, the gallery has also a special project space in Albisola Superiore, on the Ligurian Riviera of Ponente: Aedicula Raffaella Cortese.

This particular division of spaces not only allows artists to interact with different contexts in thinking about their exhibitions and presenting their works, but it also offers a unique opportunity to establish and nurture dialogue between the practices of artists across different generations and origins. Not only that, it is also the basis of a visit to art in close relationship with the city in which one is: one passes from one space to another as one crosses the street, encountering Milan and its passersby. This is the reason for the gallery’s motto “Still a place,” because the place shapes the discovery of the artists and their world: the works here acquire a unique aura, given the close correlation with a space far from the repeatable logic of the white cube.

In 2022, Raffaella Cortese opened Aedicula, a 12-square-meter exhibition space in Albisola Superiore (Liguria) as a window on contemporary art that showcases two special projects each year. The first project, taking place over the spring and summer, features new commissions by young artists in collaboration with their respective galleries. The second project involves the creation of site-specific artworks by the gallery’s represented artists. Aedicula offers a unique opportunity to experience and contemplate art with a different pace, in sync with a natural and aquatic spirit that embodies the freshness of water, the warmth of the sun, and the depth of the blue.