The House of the Collector

Installation view at Galleria Massimo de Luca, Venice
Ceramics glazed, colored light bulb and changing color LED lights, plexiglass, carpet, steel stands, shelves, auction magazines.
2018

This project is part of the exhibition “Charmimg Encounter” where I was invited to address my work to
“La Linea Infinita” (1960) by Pietro Manzoni after visiting the collection of Dionisio Gavagnin.
The installation observes the relationships between the elements involved in the art system: the artwork, the art collector and its value in relation to the context.

Manzoni’s cylindrical labelled sculpture, which ideally contains a line of infinitive length, questions the role of the object itself and the value attributed by the art system. My intervention aims to re-contextualise Manzoni’s work inside an environment ideally conceived as the house of the collector in the gallery space, with the scope to amplify the relationship between the idea of the artwork and its context.
Here the work of Manzoni is displayed together with sculptures made of ceramic glazed and displayed as lamps and ornaments. This body of works plays on the borders and the ambiguity between functional and non-functional, art and interior design object.
The auction catalogues taken by the collector’s studio, a fruit bowl centerpiece (working also as a lamp) and a pair of slippers made of ceramic, are placed on the carpet, and refer to the domestic aspect of a living room or a studio where the collector spends time looking at artworks and browsing through auction catalogues.
The sculptures resembling the shape of a mask represent the observer. The eye shape is multiplied as a metaphor of the eye seeing but at the same time being seen by the viewer. The masks placed at the sides of Manzoni’s work are formally inspired to the fencing Japanese mask worn by the protagonist of “Mishima: a life in four chapters” (1985) by Paul Scrhader.
The installation investigates the border between art, design, decorative and functional object, observing also the compulsory activity of accumulating artworks by the collector, the compulsory act of making by the artist. These aspects seem to belong to different territories but they all move towards the same direction: the sale.

Everything is studied in order to annoy and at the same time attract the viewer, for this reason I have decided to paint the wall in yellow and use a carpet of the same color.
This color corresponds to the central area of the visible spectrum from 561 to 580 nanometers, which is perceived as the brightest zone.
The perception of Yellow provokes an over stimulation of the eye because its visualization stimulates simultaneously the green and red cones of the retina to the maximum point of receptivity. Yellow is a color perceived also by color-blind people, it is generally used in the commercial sector, especially to attract the attention to a particular offer and to push the customer to buy a product.
Yellow is not recommended in the decoration of domestic interiors because annoys the eye and provokes irritability when someone is exposed to it for long time. At the same time it is a color that captures the attention as well as is connected to a warm sensation and the energy of the sun. The use of this color in the gallery aims to create an immersive enviroment where the objects exhibited are stressed and where their light component is emphasized.The viewer is over-stimulated becoming part of the composition and wandering as if she/he was inside a showroom looking at the "products" exhibited.