The little head covered with gold tiles from Ravenna created by Alessandro Mendini in 1993 has lips that seem to smile. Next to it, there is a sculpture with the shape of a human head-mask divided into colored squares with two large yellow ears, Neo Malevic from 2003, while the wall at the back of the room is dominated by Milo's lamp, from 1988, reissued by Codiceicona in 2022, where the luminous bulb is semi-covered by a curved metal plate with two holes for the eyes and which seems to recall the current themes of the post -human.
It is composed of fourteen objects and six drawings, from 1987 to 2018, the core of the Visi exhibition dedicated to the work of Mendini, curated by Aldo Colonetti and Archivio Alessandro Mendini, in the Nuova Manica Lunga Library of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, in Venice, until June 16th by reservation www.vistcini.com.
"For this exhibition at the Cini Foundation - noted Elisa and Fulvia Mendini, daughters of the architect-designer who died five years ago -, we decided to investigate the theme of the face, one of the most fascinating aspects of our father's work.
Particularly interested in anthropomorphism, he often designed objects and things with human features, faces, heads or even just eyes.
In the vast iconography of his work, we have identified some of the objects that represent this figurative topic.
They are drawings, vases and sculptures, expressed in different material languages, from silver and metals, to ceramics, glass and mosaic".
Mendini himself, in his notes, underlined how the human face represented for him "a means and a primary phenomenon of self-design", in the sense that "the face is a place, a pictorial support, a decorative surface, a basic element of the project of 'sense' of every person, of every man as an actor on the world stage".
Renata Codello, general secretary of Cini, noted: "The Visi exhibition retraces the designer's anthropomorphic research with a thematic slant, narrating his vision of the potential of art in flashes of inspiration."
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