from Piaggio museum exhibition catalog

Gianni Pettena is always described as the "an-architect," often assigning an incomplete – if not downright reductive – significance to this term. Above and beyond this definition, however effective it may have been at the time and even today, there are many themes in Pettena's work that have not been sufficiently investigated: themes (originally shared with other exponents of the "Radical" movement) in which he has moreover constantly kept his interest alive through his continual activity as a critic and his long work as a teacher. His determination to explore those border zones between the artistic disciplines, and in particular between the fields of architecture and the visual arts, in which the artistic discourse is enriched by multiple contributions and influences, can be summed up at bottom as the typical dissatisfaction of the artist who feels humiliated by the need to choose a language and does not intend to deny himself any possible approach to the world of representation.