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Exhibition sponsored by the Tuscany region and the city of
Prato curated by Stefano Pezzato and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia
CID Space/Visual arts
Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato
9th October 2011 - 26th February 2012
From 9th October to 26th February 2012 the Luigi Pecci Centre
for Contemporary Art in Prato presents the exhibition SUPERSTUDIO/backstage
curated by Stefano Pezzato and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia.
The exhibition documents Superstudio activity from
1966 to 1978, continuing the recovery and development of
the historical experience of Florentine radical architecture
which had already been developed by the Pecci Centre – in its
role as Tuscan contemporary art museum – via the purchase of
works, documents or exhibition projects such as the recent Invito
al viaggio (Invitation to Travel) at the Pecci Museum in Milan
which included, among others, some Superstudio projects.
The new exhibition, at the spazio CID/ arte visive (CID Space/visual
arts), presents a series of photographic images from the Toraldo
di Francia archive, which documents research activity that stretched
the boundaries of architecture to encompass other artistic practices,
viewing the project not only as a work which could solve problems,
but also as a tool for investigating and learning.
Together with the numerous photographs, objects from the Histograms
series (Istogrammi 1969) will be on display: lithographs, original
lamps, Superstudio films and publications. The model of the
first joint exhibition between Superstudio and Archizoom Superarchitecture
(Superarchitettura 1966/2002) will be presented again, created
to mark the occasion of the regional festival Continuity in
Tuscany:1945-2000 (Continuità in Toscana: 1945-2000) and today
belonging to the museum collection in Prato. There is also the
reconstruction of Supersurfaces (Supersuperficie 1971/2011),
the original micro-environment made for the exhibition Italy:
The New Domestic Landscape at the MoMA in New York, which premièred
at the Pecci Museum in Milan last spring.
Artist's biography
Superstudio
It was founded in Florence in 1966 by Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano
Toraldo di Francia, who were later joined by Roberto Magris
from 1967, Gian Piero Frassinelli from 1968, Alessandro Magris
from 1970 and Alessandro Poli from 1970-1972. In the space of
a year, they had developed a comprehensive search for images,
starting with Superarchitecture (1966-68) which was “like a
tool for interpreting and describing reality” (Toraldo di Francia).
They also experimented a progressive visualisation of "non-physical
architecture ideas” (Adolfo Natalini), which included: the “non-figurative”
automatic generation of a quantitative system of "non-continuous
three-dimensional diagrammes" (Histograms of architecture, 1969);
the elaboration of an architectural model of total urbanisation
(Continuous monument, 1969-70); the spatial application of the
illusionist effects of mirrors (Architecture reflected, 1970);
and the utopian extension of architecture in astral space (Interplanetary
architecture, 1971).
In the visions of 12 Ideal Cities (1971) Superstudio formulated
"premonitions of the mystical rebirth of urbanism", echoed in
1972 in the publication of Italo Calvino's The Invisible Cities.
It also conceived the “literary parable” of five Fundamental
Acts, which focused on the ritual themes of Life, Up-bringing,
Ceremony, Love and Death (1971-73) and interpreted them as "necessary
preconditions for a philosophical and anthropological resurgence
of the city architecture ” (Roberto Gargiani).
The Supersuperficie project, presented at the MoMA in New York
in 1972, therefore came to prefigure "an alternative model of
life on earth", through that which Toraldo di Francia described
as "another border-line vision: a new reality, which lost its
solid, mechanical, object connotations, of architecture as life's
three-dimensional support, it spreads out on a neutral, virtual
grid with flows of information and energy like support for a
weak organisation of the region. Starting with the idea that
the planet has been rendered homogeneous via an energy and information
network, a reductive process is hypothesised for architecture
and different environmental control without the necessary use
of three-dimensional systems”.
Successive participation in the Global Tools project, which
gathered together the work of various groups and individual
architects in 1973 under the term “radical architecture” (suggested
by Germano Celant, who had also named the Poor Art movement,
and recommended by the magazine "Casabella" directed by Alessandro
Mendini), determined the conclusion of that very experience.
"When we produced the projects and the images, the writing
and the objects for radical architecture, radical architecture
didn't exist. Now that this label exists, radical architecture
doesn't exist any longer. In other words, it wasn't the umpteenth
movement or school with well-defined, homogeneous characters,
but a series of situations, intentions and behaviours” (Superstudio).
There then came the projects The wife of Lot (centred on the
reproduction of basic geometric shapes) and Zeno's conscience
(which documents the material culture of the farming civilisation).
Both were presented at the Venice Biennial in 1978 and on the
subject Lara-Vinca Masini wrote that "the two works on show
could be seen as in contrast with each other: on one hand a
pessimistic criticism on the mechanisms and the destinies of
architecture, on the other hand an optimistic analysis for a
resurgence of design, building and use through the collective
creativity. The two works shouldn't be seen as in contrast to
each other nor as a contradiction of each other: together they
are dialectically our attempts to understand in order to change”.
To mark the occasion of the exhibition SUPERSTUDIO/backstage
at the Pecci Centre in Prato, a new monograph on Superstudio
will be published for the Quodlibet Editions and will include
all texts and an updated iconographic repertoire.
SUPERSTUDIO/backstage
curated by Stefano Pezzato and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia
Spazio CID/Visual Arts
Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato
Viale della Repubblica, 277 - Prato
Free entry
Times: every day 10 am – 7pm. Closed Tuesdays, 24, 25 and 31
December 2011.
Open on 1st January 2012 from 3.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. with free
admission.
Open on 6st January 2012 from 10.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m.
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