03 October 2026
Spazio Thetis
Piccola scala della conoscenza
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Small Ladder of Knowledge, the new permanent installation by Simone Meneghello at Spazio Thetis
Five overlaid achromatic dictionaries arranged to form a small staircase inside a large white cube missing two sides—a structure that strongly echoes the bottomless boxes that are a recurring element in the artist’s work. This is Simone Meneghello’s work “Piccola scala della conoscenza” (Small Ladder of Knowledge), the new permanent installation created by the Milanese artist—who has long resided in Padua—for Spazio Thetis at the Venice Arsenale.
The installation, created in collaboration with architect Amedeo Giordano of B-Lab—who designed “Unibox,” the large white cube housing the work—will be inaugurated on Thursday, October 1, at 6:00 p.m. in the garden of Spazio Thetis. The Venetian contemporary art collection also features two other permanent works by Meneghello: “Il sentiero di Marco Polo” and “Le colonne della conoscenza.”
“The Little Staircase of Knowledge can be interpreted as an ascent or a descent, but in either direction it leads nowhere else: it encounters the wall or the floor, its own limit, and, ultimately, itself. The space is activated through a staircase composed of five dictionaries, an element that transforms language into structure, passage, and a symbolic device of access.”
On a conceptual level, the installation poses a radical question: “whether language can truly lead to knowledge, or whether what we call knowledge necessarily remains confined within the structures through which we seek to formulate it. Dictionaries—tools through which language attempts to name, define, and order the world—thus become the steps along a path that leads the code to the point of its own inadequacy.”
“Small Scale of Knowledge” thus ideally encounters “its own limit,” but this—says Meneghello—“is not presented as a conclusion. It becomes a threshold. Beyond it, language, thought, and representation cannot accompany us: the attempt to cross it belongs, in the work, not to understanding but to ecstasy.”
For years, Meneghello has placed the themes of language, the word, books, and limits at the center of his artistic research, which has led him to “encounters” with Pasolini, Pavese, Borges, the Bible, and contemporary philosophers—all rendered for visual appreciation through works consisting of individual sheets of paper that, through layers of typewritten and effectively illegible letters, faithfully reproduce the authors’ entire texts.
The opening will take place on Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 6:00 p.m.
The artist
Simone Meneghello was born in Milan on September 3, 1973. After studying at the Brera Art High School and the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, he embarked on a creative journey that found expression through various forms of visual art, which he combined from the very beginning with music composition and production.
