Scorie Microcosmiche – Prototipi
(Microcosmic Slag – Prototypes)
Everyday objects, typically associated with cleanliness and order, are radically reimagined in their perception and function. Tiles, plates, soap bars, toilet paper rolls, desks, and shirts undergo an unexpected metamorphosis, becoming coated in a dense layer of hair, dust, lint, crumbs, and threads. These elements, usually discarded and removed, become an integral part of the material, embedding themselves into surfaces and altering their very nature.
While in the walkable surfaces cycle was exhibited the relationship between the body and waste is heightened through magnification and the visitor’s physical engagement, in Prototypes this relationship becomes even more ambiguous and unsettling: objects, seemingly intact in their form, appear contaminated by an unexpected organic presence that subverts their use and perception. The familiar turns alien, the ordinary becomes a space of tension between attraction and repulsion, engaging in a silent dialogue between materiality and bodily memory. The insertion of these "residues" onto functional surfaces creates a visual and tactile short-circuit, raising questions about our relationship with intimacy, hygiene, and the very notion of waste. Accumulation becomes a trace, disposal turns into an imprint, and the object takes on a new identity, suspended between the lived and the invisible, the personal and the collective. Designed and exhibited in Piero Manzoni’s former studio in Brera (Milan), these works find a conceptual resonance with the radicalism of an artist who made the body and its waste a field of extreme experimentation. If his Artist’s Shit challenged the value of the art object and the human product, Prototypes carries on this legacy, pushing the reflection even further on the relationship between organic matter, memory, and the subversion of the everyday.
The insertion of these "residues" onto functional surfaces creates a visual and tactile short-circuit, raising questions about our relationship with intimacy, hygiene, and the very notion of waste. Accumulation becomes a trace, disposal turns into an imprint, and the object takes on a new identity, suspended between the lived and the invisible, the personal and the collective.
Designed and exhibited in Piero Manzoni’s former studio in Brera (Milan), these works find a conceptual resonance with the radicalism of an artist who made the body and its waste a field of extreme experimentation. If his Merda d'Artista (Artist’s Shit) challenged the value of the art object and the human product, Prototypes carries on this legacy, pushing the reflection even further on the relationship between organic matter, memory, and the subversion of the everyday.
(Detail)
A space-time journey of existential nature, evoking a Freudian residue and its most recent elaborations, with Jacques Lacan at the forefront; a voyage beyond the boundaries of shame and reality, resonating as both a redemption of the Divine Marquis and an unprecedented reference to the tow concealed by his tailor beneath the armpits of Casanova’s summer jacket—an artifice that enabled his daring escape from the 'Leads' of Venice. A magnificent flight from reality, reminiscent of those staged by Piero Manzoni and, in the present case, enacted by Eleonora Gugliotta.
Rolando Bellini