Lasvit: glass monsters and burlesque at the Teatro Gerolamo

The location chosen this year by Lasvit is, to say the last, original: the nineteenth-century Teatro Gerolamo, reopened last year after considerable restoration and an even longer period of being closed to the public. The real Milanese remember it as the “small Scala”, a gem all in wood, with two levels of box seating and a gallery, where in the 1960s and 1970s people would go to have fun at the performances in local dialectic by Piero Mazzarella, Enzo Jannacci and Dario Fo. But many – you can bet on it – have never set foot inside this place. Here, during Design Week, the Czech company specialised in crafting glass presents a collection of 16 monsters, made by 16 studios (“a real challenge for the artisans,” according to Leon Jakimič, Lasvit president and founder), on display in the upper-level gallery. Instead, hanging above the stage is a composition of 108 small Neverending Glory chandeliers, while at the centre of the U-shaped orchestra we find the totem The Independant by Maxim Velcovsky, made with over 100 TV screens. Each hour, the theatre comes alive with short burlesque performances where the glass works play a key role.

Among the amusing monsters of Maarten Baas, or the anthropomorphic ones by Alessandro Mendini, or the literary ones by Daniel Libeskind, or the minimal ones by Nendo, we admire the “erotic” monsters by Fabio Novembre, who tells us about the hard time he had finding his own monster. “It was a great challenge, because I’m such a positive and transparent person: I don’t have monsters or skeletons in my closet,” he explains. “I started with my own reference, Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man: a sketch from 1490 – wonderful, because it portrays the ideal proportion of the human body. In order to make it sexy, by adding eroticism, that is, the only spice in life that I’m interested in, I turned it into an object with monstrous proportions, though staying loyal to the ideal of absolute harmony”. However, Novembre adds that eros, more than his monster, is his Monster & Co, that is, his pleasant friend. “If you read my work, eros has always been the key to everything, the perfect interpretation to understating my work,” he continues. Eroticism, of course, but in a positive sense. “My dear friend Lorenzo Cherubini says in a song on his latest album: ‘On the calendar in my workshop there are constant images of you’. He’s referring to his wife: they’ve been together for 25 years; it’s a beautiful image, eroticism is something that’s renewed constantly with the person you grow old with: there’s nothing more erotic than an old couple that’s always lived together”.

The Campana brothers have a totally different design: a Japanese superhero robot. Humberto tells us it’s a reference to their childhood, when they’d go to the cinema during the day to see films by Franco Nero, Rita Pavone, Giuliano Gemma; and, at night, movies by Pasolini and Bertolucci. Plus, all of Italian Neorealism. “One day, my dad took me by train to São Paulo. He bought a ticket to the loveliest movie theatre in the city, with cinemascope and Technicolor,” continues Humberto. “I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and the sight of those interplanetary stations has stayed with me. I started making space ships with everything I could find, even the cactuses that grew in the countryside”. Their “monster” is a robot, but also like a dream of theirs, because Humberto confesses that, as a child, he wanted to become an astronaut. Life chose differently for him, but his attitude has always been that of a curious child: “Among my parents’ wedding presents there were also crystal vases made in Bohemia. For me, these weren’t just vases, but a kaleidoscope. Me and Humberto never were conformists. We never saw a glass as being just a glass: we’re like two kids who start 10 projects at the same time and allow themselves to be guided by passion. Some turn into products, while others are left behind or remain limited editions for galleries”.