Untold at Museo Bagatti Valsecchi – April 2014

9th April . 6th May 2014
Dialogues: silent, hence powerful. The contemporary spirit enters the museum mansion,
without preambles yet as a welcome guest, peacefully occupying its spaces to
create unexpected short circuits, juxtapositions of aesthetics and materials, artisanal
knowledge and applied arts, in the name of a continuity that takes the form of graphic
contrasts. For the second consecutive year, Vionnet, in the person of Goga Ashkenazi,
sustains as main partner the exhibition curated by Rossana Orlandi at Museo Bagatti
Valsecchi. The chosen title is both a declaration of intents and a poetic statement: Untold.
Untold as unspoken because you do not need to, because it is self-evident, subtle
and impalpable. Untold because the urgency to explain everything obscures and limits
freedom of thought.
Untold defines a path within the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi, revealing intervals and proximities
between the world of today and the authority of history. A piece of a designer or
a contemporary artist is placed in each room, creating a soft tension with the existing
environment. At the center of this magnificent trip is the impressive installation created
by Jacopo Foggini for Vionnet using polychrome methacrylate: an accumulation of colorful
signs hanging from the ceiling and protruding from the floor, leaving a huge, Vshaped
empty space in the middle. The works of Formafantasma for Lobmeyr, Maarten
Baas for Carpenters Workshop, Nacho Carbonell, Marcel Wanders,Gaetano Pesce, Nika
Zupanc for Dormeo, Wonmin Park, Jacopo Foggini, Enrico Marone Cinzano, Rooms,
Carlo Bach, Nigel Coates, Barnaba Fornasetti and Nigel Coates, Liborio Capizzi, Von
Pelt, Hillside Out, Yukiko Nagai, JamesPlumb, Os and OOS, Uufie, Treluce, as well as
the reissues of original designs by Salvador Dali for Bd Barcelona occupy the other
rooms. The idea that ages-old techniques and knowledge do not limit, rather stimulate
the new, unifies the path, because only freedom from pre-set rule produces progress.
The same experimental freedom is owned by Vionnet and Audemars Piguet, additional
partner to the exhibition. In a dedicated environment, Audemars Piguet will exhibit a
series of historical styles while engaging in a captivating interaction with the audience,
showing a watchmaker at work on Royal Oak Offshore, the iconic model that twenty
years ago has revolutionized the world of watches both for its design – bold and daring
– and the choice of materials. The quest for innovation in the name of beauty is the
subtle, open, non-dogmatic trait d’union crossing Untold its entirety.
All along the exhibition path the chairs of the watchmen will be substituted by a selection
of contemporary chairs designed by Thomas Libertiny for Tchai, Jacopo Foggini
for Edra, Nika Zupanc for Moooi and A lot of Brasil, Philip Starck for Kartell and together
with Eugeni Quittlet for Magis, Tom Dixon for Cappellini, Franco Albini for
Cassina, Maarten Baas, Marcel Wanders, Palomba e Serafini for Crassevig, Stefano
Giovannoni, Yukiko Nagai.