An alternative path for a different vision of the Fuorisalone 2024, inspired by contemporary art. If you haven’t seen the clues, read this guide.
Like every year, Milano Design Week attracted professionals, designers and curious from all over the world. Thousands of people wandered through the streets, hidden courtyards and most evocative locations of the city in search of the most interesting and installations. Massimo Gianquitto, Level Office Landscape’s ceo and expert in Contemporary Art, explored the city, analysing the connections between the discipline of design and the most interesting artistic inspirations.
The first notable one was the exhibition at the Permanente Museum entitled “Opposites United: Intersections Beyond Boundaries”, a set of installations by various artists characterized by light environments, reflections, videos and music. The underlying theme of all the works was the involvement of the public, invited to immerse in the exhibition, at the same time, the disorientation triggered through dark spaces, intermittent lights and the reflectivity of the surfaces. Effects that are certainly the result of the many experiments conducted in the 1960s by the ‘Light and space’ group and the more famous Yayoi Kusama with her “Infinity rooms“.
The second stop, the courtyard of Palazzo Clerici where the installation “The Art of Dreams” was located, allowed contemporary art enthusiasts to recognize the inspiration of one of the most famous series by the Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno, “Cloud Cities”. These are spectacular structures in which the exhibition aesthetics merges with the user experience. People were allowed to climb, walk and find their place in these suspended spaces, imagining new environments in which to live and work. In the case of Palazzo Clerici, visitors were invited to look for an alternative space where they could rest and relax, thus becoming part of the work of art.
Continuing, at the Statale di Milano an installation placed in front of the entrance recalled the “Corridors” series by Robert Irwin. The artist, who recently passed away, is famous for having created corridors through the use of canvas screens and the projection of artificial lights and natural. But also metal cages or plasterboard partitions, which by narrowing and then widening disorientated people step by step, confusing their spatial limits and making them feel sometimes anxiety, sometimes relaxation.
Another beautiful project inside Statale was “The Amazing Walk” created by Mad Studio, a clear reference to the artist Olafur Eliasson and his work “Yellow Fog” created in Vienna and to Studio Diller Scofindio + Renfro with “Blur building” in 2002 in Switzerland. In both cases there is the presence of a material architecture which, through the fog and steam, tries to disappear, making itself invisible. In the case of the Fuorisalone, the architecture became evanescent thanks to the steam but, at the same time, the observer was invited to walk through it and then disappear.
At the Alcova exhibition, this year hosted in Villa Bagatti Valsecchi (Varedo, Brianza), the underground corridor illuminated by LEDs was striking, inspired by the great master Lucio Fontana and his luminous sculptures. To create new spaces through light and include the viewer in the work, making him live a true artistic experience in his “environments”.
The experiences that combined art and design at the Fuorisalone, therefore, personally involved the users who directly became part of the work, modifying it and making it unique each time thanks to their presence. The desire to bring new experiences to visitors, too often bored by the repetition of events and situations already seen and reviewed, has allowed art to be the service of architecture, designing landscapes in balance between the physical and the ephemeral.