Home > Current events > SISSI. ASPIRANTI ASPIRATORI

SISSI. ASPIRANTI ASPIRATORI

FROM 17 APRIL TO 19 MAY 2012


On the occasion of the 51st edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, a solo exhibition by Sissi reflects on the theme of air purification.

Sissi, Aspiranti Aspiratori, 2012, Elica Fabriano. Courtesy Fondazione Ermanno Casoli. Photo: Ramiro Castro Xiques

Tuesday, 17 April 2012, on the occasion of the 51st edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile (Milan, 17 - 22 April 2012), Elica and the Ermanno Casoli Foundation will be presenting Aspiranti Aspiratori, a solo exhibition by the artist Sissi, staged at the Elica AirFactory in the Brera district and open to the public until 19 May 2012.

The exhibition, curated by Marcello Smarrelli - the Foundation’s artistic director - takes its name from a larger project that the artist created in collaboration with Elica over about a year.

The idea for Aspiranti Aspiratori stems from the need of the company to generate new reflections on the theme of air purification. Since 2007, in fact, Elica has been the main supporter of the work of the Ermanno Casoli Foundation, set up with the goal of fostering dialogue between art and business, promoting the value and effectiveness of contemporary art within organisations.

In line with her aptitude for renaming and classifying reality, Sissi began by formulating a new concept, Organindustry, from which came a methodology capable of enabling communication between two seemingly irreconcilable entities: art and industry. The artist is housed inside the factory, familiarises herself with the environment until making it at one with her body and fills it with content. Then comes the start of an ongoing osmotic exchange between the company, transformed into the body of the artist, and the artist herself.

Sissi gave the name Innesto (graft) to the initial phase of the process, its transfer to the Elica site in Fabriano and the construction of her studio, which she called Cubatrice, inside the Prototype Laboratory. In this protected space, limited but open to all interactions, company employees witnessed the birth and growth of the artist’s works, becoming participants and accomplices in her work.

Over the space of a year, Sissi produced drawings, collages, reflections and sculptures that contribute to the narration, with a mythological slant, of the birth of ten Aspiranti Aspiratori, ten prospective objects intended to purify the air, each with a clearly-defined identity and a name indicating a key concept, consistent with its shape and its features. Their genesis is told by an animated video entitled Casting, which will be shown at the exhibition.

In accordance with the selection process that underlies the theories of evolution and that is applied in this case to the machines, the artist has created three of the ten Aspiranti Aspiratori.

“Becoming the body that hosts you is the first change I underwent.” – explains Sissi – “I imagined that I couldn’t read my own thoughts, so I always expressed them through images, in a way that was visible to all. The Aspiranti Aspiratori want to elevate themselves to purification, and I am fortunate enough to lead this evolution. To find out how, I interpreted them as individuals. The ideas are identities to choose from, the colours sensations to experience, the shapes bodies to encounter.”

For the duration of the Salone del Mobile, a performer will engage visitors into a narrative path through the exhibition. At the end of the visit, the participants will be invited to vote for their favourite Aspirante Aspiratore, thus becoming judges at a casting from which the Aspirante Aspiratore that, thanks to an industrial process, can become an air purifier, will emerge.

The exhibition will be enhanced by an artist’s book entitled Aspiranti Aspiratori, published by Corraini.

The initiative is documented on www.aspirantiaspiratori.com, where you can also vote for the Aspiranti Aspiratori.

ELICA AIRFACTORY Via Pontaccio, 10
I-20121 Milan
INFORMATION: Phone: +39 0732610801
Website: http://www.aspirantiaspiratori.com
Fax: +39 0732610740
Mail : coordinamento@fondazionecasoli.org

OPENING TIMES: Opening: Tuesday, 17 April 2012 6 pm.
Opening hours: Monday - 2 pm to 7 pm. Tuesday to Saturday - 11 pm to 7 pm.
ADMISSION PRICE: Free entrance
CONTACTS: Marta Colombo Phone: +39 340 3442805
martacolombo@gmail.com
Stefania Fois Phone: +39 0732610801
coordinamento@fondazionecasoli.org