by
Angela Tumminelli
1st Florence Biennial
New Persona/New Universe
The transformation of the human body and the identity of the part it plays
The exhibition, set up in the ninteenth century "La Leopolda"
railway station, contains a series of environments where 13 fashion designers,
flanked by the all-important contribution of 14 contemporary artists, display
their ideas on the transformation of the modern image of the body. These
installations, which really do provoke the imagination, utilize various
forms of language, from photography, music and design to the technology
provided by Hubble Telescope.
The architect Arata Isosaki,
designer of the seven Pavilions
exhibiting the works created by
Artists and Fashion Designers
(Photo by Gianfranco Gorgoni, with the kind permission of the press
office of the
Biennial of Firenze) |
One of the first installations to attract large numbers of visitors
is the one by David Bowie, the well known singer and actor, and marks
his first public experience as an artist. His robots are placed in a dark
environment, surrounded by strange sounds, and perhaps expect us to imagine
the clothes of the future, reduced to their bare essentials; however the
robot itself, suspended in the air and hanging from a box containing a
luminous ufo, is disquieting. Vivienne Westwood's creation is certainly
more reassuring; her eighteenth century style clothes, abounding in jabots
and lace, are worn by placid dummies that seem to envelop the visitor
in an atmosphere of the past. There are a great many exhibits that deform
reality by developing the subject of the identity of the male and female
roles in life, from both the cultural and sexual point of view. Several
exhibitors amuse themselves by developing this last aspect, either with
monstrous and sexless multi-limbed figures or, viceversa, with enormous
sexual organs in the foreground. The Japanese artist, Yohj Yamamoto, has
prepared an extremely original environment containing a series of figures
that are human only in shape because they are created from pieces of wood.
Various sized sticks and pieces of wood that, after being weathered by
water, wind and time, have lost their original surface and acquired a
worn patina. All these pieces of wood are assembled together to take on
a life of their own and resemble the personalities that populate what
is today a naturally cold and detached environment, compared to the way
it was when it was still a railway station. Therefore the exhibition at
the Leopolda at Porta a Prato offers an incredible variety of unusual
images that are not only fascinating but also fun to look at. Hours: 10am-6pm,
closed on Tuesdays. Entrance ticket 12.000 lire Catalogue 256 pages, 230
illustrations in colour as well as black and white, in paper-back 80.000
lire - Published by Skira Editore - Milan.
See also: The Biennial, a success with the
public
FAN-Florence ART
News
by
Silvia Messeri
& Sandro Pintus
|
