Working as a translator and editor while at university, in 1996 Gioni founded
Trax, one of the first Italian digital art and culture magazines, which published writings by, among others,
Tracey Emin,
Gilbert and George,
W.J. Mitchell,
Hans Ulrich Obrist,
Chris Ofili,
Matthew Slotover,
Rirkrit Tiravanija,
Kara Walker,
David Foster Wallace, and
Edmund White.
Flash Art, 1997–2003 In 1997, Gioni joined the contemporary art magazine
Flash Art, initially working in the Milan office. In 2000, he was appointed as the American editor of the magazine, The film premiered at the
Tribeca Festival, and played in theaters in 2017. In 2002, Gioni, Cattelan and curator Ali Subotnick founded The Wrong Gallery, billed as "the smallest exhibition space in New York". The Wrong Gallery had an exhibition space of approximately one metre square, which could be seen through a locked single glass door. It later went on show at the
Tate Modern in
London, UK, in 2005. Its first commissioned project, 'Short Cut', by artist duo
Elmgreen & Dragset, opened in Milan in May 2003. On the occasion of the International Expo in Milan, in 2015, with the Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Gioni curated "The Great Mother" at
Palazzo Reale. And in 2017 he organized "The Restless Earth" at
Triennale di Milano. During his tenure as artistic director, he has curated projects by
Allora and Calzadilla,
Paweł Althamer,
Darren Almond,
John Bock, Maurizio Cattelan,
Martin Creed,
Tacita Dean,
Jeremy Deller, Elmgreen and Dragset,
Urs Fischer,
Fischli and Weiss, Cyprien Gaillard,
Ragnar Kjartansson,
Sarah Lucas,
Ibrahim Mahama,
Paola Pivi,
Pipilotti Rist,
Anri Sala, and
Tino Sehgal.
New Museum, 2006–present In 2006, Gioni joined the
New Museum, New York as Director of Special Exhibitions, before being as appointed as the Edlis Neeson Artistic Director in 2014. In 2021, Gioni joined the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation as artistic director, expanding his nomadic museum approach with art installations in unexpected locations internationally.
Exhibitions Gioni has curated numerous international exhibitions and biennials including the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the 8th
Gwangju Biennale (2010), the first New Museum Triennial (co-curated with
Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman in 2009), the 4th
Berlin Biennale (co-curated with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick in 2006) and
Manifesta 5 (co-curated with
Marta Kuzma in 2004). Writing about 'Ostalgia' in 2021, art critic
Jerry Saltz described Gioni as "master of his own form of large-scale exhibition as narrative, time machine, pleasurable pedagogy, historical potboiler come to life, and insight." For the 55th Venice Biennale, Gioni curated the exhibition around the theme "Il Palazzo Enciclopedico" (The Encyclopedic Palace). The title was an homage to late outsider artist Marino Auriti's attempt to build an edifice containing all human knowledge. The exhibition brought together the work of professional artists showcased along the creations of amateurs, outsiders, and dilettantes. Among the many exhibits, it featured a presentation of Carl Gustav Jung's illuminated manuscript “The Red Book”. Since 2015, he has organized the presentations of the Tony and Elham Salame Collection at the Aishti Foundation in Beirut, where he has curated three exhibitions, titled respectively “New Skin” (2015), "Good Dreams, Bad Dreams: American Mythologies" (2016), and "The Trick Brain" (2017) along with Urs Fischer's major solo exhibition in the Middle East: "The Lyrical and the Prosaic" (2019). In 2017, he curated the exhibition "Giuseppe Penone: Matrice", produced by
Fendi at the
Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome. Gioni was also part of the commission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism that selected
Giuseppe Penone's "Leaves of Stone" to be the first contemporary artwork to be permanently installed in the historic center of the city of Rome. In 2018, in London at The Store X Gioni organized "Strange Days – Memories of the Future", an exhibition-anthology of video works originally presented at the New Museum. In 2019, Gioni curated "The Warmth of Other Suns. Stories of Global Displacement", a collaboration between the New Museum and the
Phillips Collection in
Washington, D.C., and at
Museo Jumex in
Mexico City he curated "Appearance Stripped Bare: Desire and the Object in the Work of
Marcel Duchamp and
Jeff Koons, Even", the first exhibition to bring into dialogue the works of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons – the show attracted more than 440,240 visitors, making it the most well-attended show in the museum's history and one of the most visited exhibitions of contemporary art in Mexico. In 2021, Gioni served as part of the curatorial advisory group – composed of
Naomi Beckwith,
Glenn Ligon and Mark Nash – which supervised the posthumous realization of
Okwui Enwezor's exhibition "Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America", which had been originally conceived by Enwezor for the New Museum. In June 2021, he organized "The Greek Gift", a small collective exhibition for the
Dakis Ioannou,
Deste Foundation's Slaughterhouse in
Hydra, Greece. In July 2021, he curated the inaugural installation for the Beatrice Trussardi Foundation by Polish sculptor
Paweł Althamer. In September 2021, he curated George Condo's "The Picture Gallery" at the Long Museum in Shanghai, the artist's first major exhibition in Asia. Also in 2021, Gioni curated
Jeff Koons's major solo exhibition "Lost in America" at the
Qatar Museum's Al Riwaq gallery in
Doha. ==Other work==