House Taken Over

House Taken Over takes Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan as its point of departure. Designed by Piero Portaluppi in the early 1930s and historically inhabited by the sisters Nedda and Gigina Necchi, the villa becomes, through the artist’s gaze, less a documentary subject than a psychological and narrative device: a space charged with traces, ghosts, and latent stories.

Its interiors are fragmented and recomposed into ambiguous configurations in which architecture mirrors emotional and relational tensions. The rooms unfold like theatrical stages suspended in time, devoid of human figures yet profoundly inhabited. Presence emerges indirectly through objects, light, and subtle traces left within the space.

Grasmann’s paintings function as chambers of memory, where time appears fluid and non-linear, shaped by apparitions, absences, and invisible residues, allowing the past to persist and overlap with the present.

Throughout the series, the theme of sisterhood surfaces as an underlying force, evoking an invisible presence that gradually inhabits and transforms the domestic environment. Proximity and distance, intimacy and autonomy, resemblance and difference move through the works like subterranean tensions. The paintings frequently emerge in pairs, as parallel interpretations of the same interior filtered through the distinct gazes of the two sisters. Slight shifts in perspective and detail create subtle dissonances between the works, allowing the same space to unfold through different emotional and psychological perceptions.

Portaluppi’s modernist architecture, with its geometric rigor and restrained elegance, is progressively destabilized through painting: reflections, openings, artificial lights, and domestic details transform the interiors into almost cinematic settings. As is often the case in the artist’s work, there is no explicit narrative; instead, each painting operates as a threshold, inviting the viewer’s projection and imagination.

Text by Caterina della Longa, originally published for the exhibition House Taken Over at Rolando Anselmi Gallery, Rome, June 2026