Max Farina’s Photographic Project at 2026 Salone del Mobile of Milan

San Polo Art Gallery and Max Farina are pleased to present THE MILAN CRONORAMA – La Madonnina over 120 hours, the new exhibition project by Max Farina, created on the occasion of the 2026 Salone del Mobile di Milano.

The exhibition takes place at the Order of Architects of Milan, Via Solferino 17 and focuses on a new photographic project dedicated to the city of Milan. The Cronorama of Milan was born in 2018 from an unprecedented point of view: the Madonnina atop the Duomo. In collaboration with the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo, Max Farina stationed himself for 120 hours over the course of a year at the top of the tallest spire, 108 meters high, photographing Milan’s skyline day and night, summer and winter, producing over 10,000 shots. In the final work, the complete panorama provides a broad and layered view of the city: Palazzo Reale, the Arengario, Piazza del Duomo, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the CityLife skyline, San Siro stadium, and many other iconic city landmarks are clearly visible.

Max Farina’s Cronorami are photographic projects of “visual exhaustion,” based on a fragmented vision of iconic places. For over ten years, through this unique practice and endless stakeouts, the artist has observed cities from a single fixed viewpoint. The Cronorami capture details that reveal the hidden poetry within the transforming urban chaos. These time capsules offer a fresh perspective, in which the passage of time turns the work into an organic piece in constant evolution.

Inspired by Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien by Georges Perec (Paris, 1975), Farina observes and conveys the essence of each city, recording what happens—even when nothing seems to happen. Farina “breaks the stereotype of Milan” to propose a kind of “machine à voir”, inviting viewers to observe the city through a magnifying lens, scrutinizing its smallest details: light and shadow, streets and skies, skyscrapers and trees, crowds and silences…

THE WALL

The photographic installation is conceived as a participatory performance, where the audience’s gesture becomes an integral part of the work. Composed of 105 blocks of paper, each about 80 pages, the installation translates the Cronorama into a physical and dynamic form: each block represents a fragment of the great Milan panorama while containing its multiple temporal, light, and atmospheric variations.

Visitors are invited to interact directly: by flipping through and detaching images, they can choose which moments to modify, composing their own version of the panorama. In this way, the viewer becomes a co-author, actively shaping a constantly evolving vision of Milan.

Cronorama projects have also been developed in Venice with Rivus Altus, in New York with works of Times Square and Brooklyn, in Paris with Trocadéro and Notre-Dame, in Los Angeles, and in many other cities, always seeking new iconic viewpoints.