Tono su Tono – The value of Attention

Between September 2023 and May 2025, 55 international artists took part in Tono su Tono, the first exhibition of the Grey Blue Green museum, inaugurated on 15 June 2025 at Induno Olona station by its director, Andrea Ceresa.

The station sits in a deep trench carved during renovation works between 2009 and 2018. Two concrete walls, 7 metres high and 150 metres long, now flank the Milan–Porto Ceresio line. From the platforms, beyond the walls, nothing is visible but the sky and a mountain—Grey Blue Green.

Artists came from all over the world to draw on the walls until they were completely filled, building a rich collection of styles and techniques. Writers from Varese, Milan, Berlin, Paris, and Jakarta; styles from the 1990s to the future (anti-styles?); 2D and 3D; bombing and blocks; handstyle and wildstyle. With puppets and without. Also figurative drawing, abstract drawing, and poetry.

All this was possible under one condition: the work had to hide within the paradox of a show that doesn’t show off. To exist, the drawings had to blend into the marks left by builders during the construction of the station. No colour, only grey on grey: bricks on cement. Tone on tone, out of survival instinct. So even though new large drawings appeared every week for months, almost no one noticed. Yet in curious light—like at the vernissage—that graphite can shine like silver.

Texts by the curator and an interview accompany images by two photographers and wall scans, in a design by Post Action. The large format envelops readers across 120 pages, just as the exhibition’s drawings embrace travellers in the station.

On 4 December at SPECTRUM, you will have the opportunity to browse the Tono su Tono catalogue: the care devoted to the content and the object itself—the print quality and the packaging—makes it a precious item. Afterwards, for the more curious, all that remains is to buy a train ticket to Induno Olona.