Endless Summer – contemporary art exhibition

A contemporary art exhibition in the heart of salt-producing Cervia

Every spring, the Magazzino del Sale (Salt Warehouse) in Cervia, a suggestive historic building of the Municipality overlooking the canal port, hosts Endless Summer, one of the most followed contemporary art exhibitions in Romagna. The project is conceived and produced by MAGMA APS, an interdisciplinary research collective active in Romagna since 2014, and develops as a three-year exhibition cycle (2025-2027): three chapters that, year after year, weave together painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance within the history-laden walls of a warehouse once used for salt storage.

The theme: a summer that never ends

The title is inspired by the surf documentary The Endless Summer, filmed by Bruce Brown in the mid-sixties, in which the director chases surfers around the world in search of perpetual summer. From this comes the exhibition's central idea: summer as a mental state and utopia, an experience where emotional intensity blends with the fleetingness of time. An impossible and poetic myth, which becomes the key to interpreting over fifty works arranged according to free logic of juxtaposition and resonance, in a sort of curatorial jam session.

Artists and collective curatorship

Endless Summer brings into dialogue some of the most important names in Italian and international contemporary art: past editions have featured works by Maurizio Cattelan, Nan Goldin, Paola Pivi, Francesco Vezzoli, Andy Warhol, Marinella Senatore, and Laure Prouvost, alongside numerous emerging artists. The selection is not entrusted to a single curator but to a network of different perspectives: artistic directors, independent curators, and project spaces from across the country, making the curatorship a choral and generationally plural action.

The Magazzino del Sale and the city

The choice of location is no coincidence. Cervia, in Emilia-Romagna, is a city with an ancient salt-producing tradition, and the Magazzino del Sale represents the living memory of this productive identity. Hosting contemporary art in such a distinctive space means fostering a dialogue between past and present, industrial archaeology and contemporary languages, in an area that thrives on the seaside tourism of the Romagna Riviera during the summer.

A free event open to all

Endless Summer offers free admission: a choice that makes it an accessible event for residents, tourists, and art enthusiasts passing through the coast. The exhibition is accompanied by participatory openings and a program that makes the Magazzino del Sale a focal point for the cultural scene of Cervia and the province of Ravenna.