Fabian Schöneich
— GermanFor Palazzo Vimana’s inaugural direction "The Threshold", Schöneich brings particular resonance through his founding of CCA Berlin — a project explicitly conceived as a response to the over-bureaucratization of large institutions. By building a new space from scratch with the stated aim of stepping back so that the work itself takes center stage, he enacted a curatorial gesture that mirrors Palazzo Vimana’s own logic: the deliberate construction of a provisional, self-aware architectural framework. His earlier co-curated project Melanchotopia (Witte de With, 2011) further reflects a long-standing interest in the emotional and structural limits of the exhibition space itself.
Subject: Invitation to curate for Palazzo Vimana – "The Threshold" Online Exhibition
Dear Fabian,
I hope this message finds you well.
I am writing to invite you to be one of the inaugural curators for Palazzo Vimana, a new conceptual architecture and international art platform without fixed walls, rooted in Bucharest but moving fluidly through contemporary art networks.
Palazzo Vimana operates as a space of encounter — neither traditional institution nor conventional exhibition format — that invites curators, artists, writers, and critics to inhabit, test, and reconfigure its symbolic framework. It began as an artist-run initiative and has evolved into a deliberately nomadic, provisional project: a platform that prioritizes sustained attention over permanent infrastructure.
For its first exhibition direction, "The Threshold", we are exploring liminality, transition, and the space before arrival. The threshold is understood not as a room but as the architectural and existential condition of entering one — the pause between outside and inside, between states of being. The exhibition will gather works that inhabit transition rather than resolution: pieces that refuse to fully arrive, that hold the crossing open, that locate meaning in the not-yet. It welcomes installation, performance documentation, video, works on paper, or any form that resists the logic of the finished object.
This direction feels particularly resonant with your practice. Your founding of CCA Berlin in 2022 — a non-collecting institution built from the ground up as a conscious response to the over-bureaucratization of larger structures, with the explicit aim of stepping back so that art and artist can come forward — mirrors the gesture at the heart of Palazzo Vimana. Your earlier projects, including the co-curated Melanchotopia at Witte de With and your rigorous yet open exhibition-making at Portikus and Kunsthalle Basel, have consistently demonstrated a deep sensitivity to the conditions and limits of the art space itself.
We see you as one of three distinct voices shaping "The Threshold" (alongside Inesa Brašiškė and Barry Schwabsky), bringing German precision and institutional self-awareness to what is intentionally a launch proposition that reflects the platform’s own suspended, in-between state.
The project is still in its early, flexible phase. We are open to how you would like to engage: developing a full exhibition proposition, selecting and commissioning works, or contributing a more discursive or textual response. There is no fixed venue; the manifestation can take hybrid, nomadic, or publication-based forms that best serve the concept.
Would you be interested in discussing this further? I would be delighted to send more detailed information about the overall program, the other two directions ("Bearing Walls" and "The Floating Room"), and the kind of support and collaboration we can offer.
Thank you for considering this invitation. Your approach to curatorial work and institutional thinking feels exceptionally aligned with what we are trying to build, and I believe your voice would set a powerful tone for Palazzo Vimana’s beginning.
Warm regards,
[Your Name]
Bucharest
[your contact email]
https://palazzovimana.com