Pinacoteca Agnelli presents a new chapter of Beyond the collection, its exhibition programme dedicated to the reactivation of the museum’s Permanent Collection, with a project by Polish artist Piotr Uklański. The exhibition Faux amis, open to the public from 31 October 2025 to 6 April 2026, will be set within the Scrigno gallery of the Pinacoteca and complemented by two additional interventions by the artist in Turin’s “Francesco Garnier Valletti” Museum of Fruit, City of Turin and the “Luigi Rolando” Museum of Human Anatomy, University of Turin.

Invited to propose a project interacting with the Pinacoteca’s Permanent Collection, Uklański chose to engage with the entire space of the Scrigno gallery, in a provocative game of resonances, references and relationships with his pictorial, installation and photographic works. The title of the exhibition Faux amis (false friends) — a French expression referring to words in different languages that sound similar but have different meanings — anticipates how Uklański juxtaposes his works with those of Bernardo Bellotto, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Antonio Canova and Édouard Manet. The artist outlines similarities often based on the pictorial genre and on formal and iconographic references, alluding to complex and layered readings of art history. With an approach he himself defines as “cannibalistic”, Uklański scours art history and finds sustenance in centuries of art produced by artists who preceded him. Faux amis underscores the role of the study and knowledge of art history in contemporary practices and presents unexpected viewpoints on the masterpieces of the Permanent Collection.

The exhibition will extend beyond the walls of the Pinacoteca to include two further interventions by the artist in two other institutions: the “Luigi Rolando” Museum of Human Anatomy, University of Turin and the “Francesco Garnier Valletti” Museum of Fruit in Turin’s San Salvario district. At the former, Uklański approaches art history through an attitude similar to that of the scientist, by relating the anatomical collection of the museum to a group of his own works that reference human corporeality and the symbolism of blood. At Museo della Frutta, hundreds of wax reproductions made by botanical nineteenth-century scientist Francesco Garnier Valletti of different species of now-extinct apples, pears, tubers and vegetables, will be placed in dialogue with Uklański’s still life paintings, themselves phantoms of canvases seized by the Nazis and recreated by the artist based on written descriptions.

Beyond the collection is a project by Pinacoteca Agnelli that, since 2022, aims to reactivate the museum's Permanent Collection. Through the involvement of contemporary artists and collaboration with other prestigious national and international institutions, works selected from the Collection become the focal point of new installations and narratives that reinterpret the historical heritage through contemporary themes.