»Palagonian«
Stefan à Wengen, Guiseppe Agnello and Gabriele Massaro
Casa dell'Arte - House of Art, Palermo, Italy

Bagheria, a small town not far from Palermo, is home to a large number of baroque summer villas, the most famous of which is the Vila dei Mostri, the Villa of the Monsters. Grotesque figures made of tufa, which originate from the creativity of the Prince of Palagonia, crowd around its garden walls. Goethe was, of course, horrified by the "botched deformities". In his diary, he henceforth labelled everything that seemed strange, alien, unusual or uncanny to him as "palagonian".

The Düsseldorf artist Stefan à Wengen and the two Italian artists Guiseppe Agnello and Gabriele Massaro create their art in a "Palagonian" sense, so to speak, as they refer directly to the strange, unfamiliar and unusual, sometimes working on the uncanny.