Alfredo Aceto 29.10.2026– 15.02.2027

Foto Credits: Raquel Echevarria

Ska pho ïde
2026
by Alfredo Aceto

We met. For the venue it would be cool if we had met in a hotel, but that wasn’t the case. I would have wanted him to love me. To take care of me. But it didn’t work out.

People project a lot of things onto hotels. Functional hotels, the ones business people go to, but not white-collar workers, well yes, but Zara white-collar workers. That’s more interesting. No edge, cutting edge.

The standard, the standardization of emotions, of wallpaper, of sheets, of lights, of love, of TV series, of wars, of games, of anxiety, of eco-anxiety, of propaganda, ours — theirs. Especially ours because ours is ours and theirs is theirs.

You think about all of this. I hope it will be possible to grasp the unexceptional nature of standardization and, at the same time, its beauty. Coz when you negotiate something it means everyone leaves the room having lost something, that’s what they say in diplomatic jargon.

And then the archive, the underwear on the floor, that writing on the sheets with a 9H pencil, such an hard lead.

You pack your suitcase, everything neat because anyway you’re never going to see each other again, because I think the last poem I wrote to you was when I still had to figure out how to make space in my life.

Now it’s back to Paris Gare du Nord, to shout from the windows towards Brussels, city of angels.

Europe and its admirers, Europe and its detractors, Europe and its subjects, Europe and its founders.

The white sheets, Aesop, Cire Trudon, Le Labo, Byredo, Baccarat and other boring stuff. People feel secure. I also do, sometimes I buy a Aesop soap with grain and I regret once I have it. The regret of the little grain soap.

When I think of that apartment in Antalya, completely empty, with nothing but a huge Wilson sound system for someone who only listens to drone music and a second-hand mattress on the floor with the chips. So hard to keep it like this over time.

Somewhere between here and there, the Iron Curtain. Tout va bien.

About

Alfredo Aceto (born 1991, Turin, Italy) is a Swiss artist based between Geneva and Paris. Working across video, sculpture, and photography, his practice draws on psychoanalysis, sociology and art history to uncover personal and collective trauma.

Aceto explores the relationship between the body and tradition through intimate narratives, often permeated by unresolved tensions. His work questions the connections between reality and fiction, revealing complex power relations and dynamics of domination. The political dimension of his practice emerges through a subtle critique of power structures, translating into the creation of spaces for transition and transformation.

Aceto studied at ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne), MSA^, The Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, and ENSBA (École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon).

He is currently an artist in residence at WIELS in Brussels and a recipient of the Italian Council 2026, promoted by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Girotondo, 2023, Foto Credit: Annik Wetter