Founded by Francesca Guerrizio and Maurizio Azzali in 2008, Otto Zoo experiments with contemporary art in all its forms by featuring young and mid-career artists, both Italian and international.
Led by Annika Pettini, appointed as the gallery’s director after Azzali’s passing, Otto Zoo has just launched a new program mainly focused on site-specific exhibitions set up in Milan. But the gallery has reached across Milan’s borders too, with special initiatives outside Italy: to name a few, a one-year art project for the Locarno Hotel in Rome (2014), Sebastiano Mauri’s site-specific installation for the Sculpture Park in Jaipur, India (2018), and T-Yong Chung’s performance for The ACAW Festival in New York (2017). In the same city, in 2013, Otto Zoo won the Pulse prize with a stand dedicated to Marjolijn De Wit’s work.
An efficient planning is key
Guerrizio and Pettini explain.
It’s the foundation to be able to dialogue with a certain type of audience. Then, there are tools we can recur to: sending newsletters and invitations, being active on social networks, creating targeted events within each exhibition, to enhance the works on display and raise the visitors’ interest in the displayed artist.
Of all the artists covered by the gallery over the years, visitors particularly loved Dutch photographer Paul Kooiker, whose versatile style blending conceptual photography and fashion attracted an incredibly large audience.
There are other potential opportunities to explore
they go on.
The way we see it, it’s essential that operators from the field network, and events like MGW have proven highly efficient to this end. In September, for example, we finally managed to organize a joint inauguration for all exhibiting spaces and galleries in the Porta Genova district. We received fantastic feedback from visitors, who participated enthusiastically
