In Amate l’architecture [Love architecture], Gio Ponti states: “Like art, architecture should feed the souls of mankind and its dreams through enchantment”. It is on this sense of enchantment that the environmental installation developed by Giovanna Bianco and Pino Valente is based, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm. It is an open dialogue with the building designed by Ponti in 1958 in the Gardet district of the Swedish Capital. A light design, one of the first by the Milanese architect outside Italy, imagined as a complete work of art. The lightness of the composition is reflected in the “flying” roof and in the ceramic tiles which cover the exterior, defining a form which recalls the hull of a boat. 

It is a confirmation of how “living à la Ponti” means enjoying a fluid space where every element contributes to enriching life, conceived as an expression of encounter and dialogue. These were the elements which led the director of the Institute Maria Sica to involve the artistic duo Bianco-Valente, who have installed an illuminated net onto the façade. Process, relation, spacing, writing, place, journey, trajectory. These are just some of the components that make up their form of communication. This is by no means a new form of intervention for them. They created a very similar one in the inner courtyard of the Madre Museum in Naples. Their art is never invasive but seeks to activate the power that lies dormant beneath the surface of the places they encounter, through actions with the inhabitants - who are also both spectators and actors - of their installations. A continuous and incessant interrogation of the potential energy of things.

It is this immaterial research, this slow examination of the space and of suspension that produces relational coincidences. Relational, curated by Adriana Rispoli, is a work which exalts Ponti's desire to create through the building which houses the Italian Cultural Institute, a place of encounter and exchange between cultures. The scenographic luminous net seems to dig into the folds of the façade in search of an open dialogue with the stories, the narrations both large and small which move through time, through the 60 years of those who have experienced and inhabited the spaces. Relational is a persuasive intervention, a place where the past encounters the present, like in a dream, purified by circumstance. Enchantment. A process of disorientation which promotes awareness of the human value of architecture and art.

The work is closely bound to art seen as human space. Perception and relation are the key concepts of this work by Biano-Valente, “two simple words which however always emerge when one tries to define that which exists, both from an architectural point of view and through the analysis of the complex dynamics created by social and cultural superstructures related to humankind: politics, economics, the movements of public opinion”, they claim. “The act of perceiving in itself implies relating with that which is accomplished with the effects of previous experiences found in a place or, at least, being able to evaluate the same phenomenon from two different points of view. In effect, the creative process through which we imagine and create a work seems, in recent years, to assume almost the same importance as the work itself”.

Their art assumes different forms each time, underlining how each encounter, each place is an opportunity to examine the idea of belonging, of bonds, of human differences and undertones. “Relational underlined for us the importance of Italian design, and the creativity of a pioneer of the idea that art, like architecture, is an element of transformation of the landscape, and in a deeper way, of humankind”, state the artists. Aware of this delicate balance, they have created a work which, despite its monumental nature, is subtle and delicate, embracing and respecting Ponti’s architecture, not substituting it but adding a new form of perception. As the sun sets in the Gardet district, in the midst of a park, the Italian Cultural Institute comes to life beneath an intricate web of illuminated blue filaments which bring together the reflections of the surrounding vegetation and the clean lines of Gio Ponti’s building. 

Immersed as we are in a forgetful present, the information, images and impressions that we receive are a succession of undifferentiated and disorganised aspects. Bianco-Valente’s art is an attempt to set off a process of participated and active perception of Gio Ponti’s architecture.

Relational is curated by Adriana Rispoli, made possible by the bequest of Birgit Christina Brorsdotter Persson, until 10 February 2019. 
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