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february 06, 2018 - Alcantara

Alcantara Project – MAXXI / Studio Visit

The multi-year Alcantara – MAXXI project has changed: with the Studio Visit program, a well-established designer proposes his or her personal interpretation of a work from the permanent collection

Nanda Vigo. Arch/arcology

2 - 25 February 2018

www.maxxi.art | www.alcantara.com 

Rome, 1 February 2018. After six years of experimentation with the material and as many group shows, involving more than 30 among designers and national or international studios, #alcantara – MAXXI project takes a new and unusual course, renewing its contents. 

With the Studio Visit program, the exhibitions become monographs and each year a well-established designer is invited to participate and #design a space inside the museum that reflects his or her personal interpretation of a work from the permanent collection. The first appointment is from 2 to 25 February 2018 with Nanda Vigo who presents Arch/arcology curated by Domitilla Dardi. 

Selected for her research and interior #design ability, #nandavigo designs for #maxxi a space that visitors can enter and move around in, born as a tribute to the visionary architect Paolo Soleri, whose works are kept in the #maxxi Architettura collection. 

Nanda Vigo explains: “When I was a little girl, reading Flash Gordon, I dreamed of living in the cities of the planet Mongo, suspended between heaven and earth in a state of antigravity. Re-examining the designs of the architect Paolo Soleri, like those in the marvellous sixteen-meter-long swath, preserved in the Archive, gave me real pleasure, all the more because these designs are only available as drawings, and never in elevation”. 

In the designer’s project, one of Soleri’s great #design is reborn in a totally original dimension and the paper’s two-dimensionality becomes an immersive space, allowing us to truly enter the #design. This is a unique opportunity for the public to get to the heart of a critical examination by an author who pays a personal tribute to a master of the past.

In the centre of the hall, composed of three walls designed as a black backdrop open at the front, the designer created a sculpture representing Single Cantilever bridge, one of Soleri’s designs from the 1960s. On the walls are displayed three-dimensional developments of some designs that the architect had represented only in drawings. This space/installation which after the exhibition will join the #maxxi Architettura permanent collection, is made entirely of Alcantara®, a material that, as always, reveals exceptional application qualities, the same that are required for conceptual research. 

“It was really exciting to assist in Nanda Vigo’s critical reading of Paolo Soleri’s work,” explains project curator Domitilla Dardi. “She showed us that an interpretation can use means that are very different from words and, for this reason, be extraordinarily effective. Through her three-dimensional and spatial #design, visitors can access the way in which a contemporary designer interprets the work of a great designer of the past. Nanda Vigo’s studio gave us a Soleri to be rediscovered, and the meeting of their works generates a new and very powerful effect.”

Through the Studio Visit program, each designer has the opportunity to spend a period of research learning about the authors present in the MAXXI’s archives, enjoying total freedom in choosing works from the collection for their project. The result of each research is exhibited as a workroom, an open “studio”, allowing the public to share in the intimacy of an author’s creative process and mindset. 

With this program, #alcantara and MAXXI renew their partnership born in 2011 to explore the unlimited potential and infinite languages of materials. This shared and continuous pathway of research and experimentation, fed by the dialogue with creativity, reveals what can still be achieved on the road of cultural innovation.

Giovanna Melandri, President of Fondazione #maxxi, declares: “I am very happy to welcome the seventh edition of the #alcantara#maxxi project, not only because it strengthens our partnership with a company that is attentive, caring and innovative, but also because it enriches the #maxxi collection with the work of a Master of #design such as #nandavigo.  The #alcantara#maxxi project goes on proving the validity of joint public/private ventures, based on shared projects, and when this process is successfully accomplished with a company like #alcantara, one that understands the value of cultural content, then it becomes a real pleasure to work together!”

“We are so pleased to pursue our collaboration with the #maxxi museum”, emphasizes Andrea Boragno, President and CEO of #alcantara S.p.A., “an activity which is yet another endorsement of our role as high-profile interlocutors in the art ambit, both in Italy and worldwide. 

Nanda Vigo’s work highlights the extraordinary versatility and contemporary spirit of Alcantara® – a flexible medium which moulds the dialogue between the artist and the Master Paolo Soleri. The reflection of architect Vigo on the concept of “arcology”, a term coined by Soleri to promote a process of harmonization between architecture and ecology, puts the accent on a central theme so dear to #alcantara, as evidenced by our pioneering and ongoing commitment to sustainability”.

“Down through the years, together with #alcantara, we have given voice to young designers and consolidated talents, by exhibiting not only their creative visions, but also the vitality of an invaluable partnership” – says Margherita Guccione, Director of #maxxi Architettura. Today, our shared project nurtures even greater ambitions. It invites an outstanding figure such as #nandavigo to interpret the architectural collection of the Museum as a living material to be shaped, with the purpose of creating an evocative site-specific installation”. 

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