The Veneto Museums Regional Directorate and the Central Institute for Catalog and Documentation (ICCD) of the Ministry of Culture, together with the Ca 'Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art and in collaboration with the Oriental Art Museum of Venice, present the photographic exhibition Claudio Gobbi. An Atlas of Persistence, curated by Francesca Fabiani. The scientific committee that worked on its realization is made up of Carlo Birrozzi, Marta Boscolo Marchi, Luca del Prete, Francesca Fabiani, Daniele Ferrara.

The Claudio Gobbi exhibition. An Atlas of Persistence presents two photographic projects that address the theme of European cultural identity through the signs and forms it generates on the landscape and on architecture, highlighting the permanent features compared to what changes: persistence. The first research investigates the iconography of the interiors of twentieth century theaters throughout Europe, the second work develops a reflection on the typological immutability of Armenian churches scattered even outside their historical territories.

The series on theaters covers over 25 countries - from Portugal to Russia, from France to Turkey - and traces a cultural journey through space and time, from which these places emerge as examples of shared memory, forms of perpetuation of a collective identity which seems outdated but still resists.

In dialogue with the work on theaters, "Armenie ville" returns an album of the 'always-the-same' which records the archetype of the Armenian churches, its dissemination beyond the Caucasian borders and its presence in the territories of modernity, as in France, where one of the largest Armenian communities in the world lives. The 64 photographs on display are of different nature and origin: some were made by Gobbi himself, others are images found in the archives of various countries (from Eastern Europe to Russia, from the Middle East to the Caucasus), others still found on internet or commissioned to different authors. Highlighting an architectural model that has remained substantially unchanged for more than 1500 years, the work analyzes the concepts of time, migration, memory and identity, while at the same time posing questions within the photographic language such as authorship, seriality, representation and materiality of photography, themes to which the intentional and equivalent coexistence of vintage photographs, author's shots, anonymous photos and postcards refers.