Document: Beyond the looking glass, in the Robert Olnick Pavilion

Magazzino Italian Art’s new free-standing structure boasts two inaugural exhibitions, marrying the spirit of community with postwar art.

“Music is air, architecture is light. There is silence in both, so when the rain falls…” architect Alberto Campo Baeza trails off enigmatically, gesturing around the stark gallery we stand in. Erected in the west wing of Magazzino Italian Art Foundation’s Robert Olnick Pavilion, his perfect cube is painted white on all six of its faces, with windows at each vertex to filter light in. The current weather conditions are not ideal for art viewing, he says; rain-streaked glass and gloomy sky refract across the walls, tinging them a crisp gray.

Right now, the gallery is home to five works by Ettore Spalletti: three large-scale paintings in blush and gray-blue, fabricated with layers upon layers of color, applied ritualistically at the same time of day. Then, there’s a black lacquered flying saucer, wedged in a low corner, and a pale blue column. As the rain picks up, Baeza’s initial statement starts to make sense: Rather than simply looking, you have to listen to this work, in constant conversation with the outside world, diffusing through the windows.