Fondazione Prada

Today I finally managed to make some time to visit Fondazione Prada. The new venue is projected in a former industrial complex with an unusual diversity of spacial environments. If I remember well, this new space was opened this last spring. I always wanted to visit it due to my interest in art, but the thought that it’s in my city and I can go whenever I want, made me always reschedule it.

The architectural project developed by OMA, led by Rem Koolhaas, expands the repertoire of spacials typologies in which art can be exhibited and shared with the public. Characterized by an articulated architectural configuration which combines seven existing buildings with three new structures ( Podium, Cinema and Torre ), the 19,000 square-meter venue is the result of the transformation of a distillery dating back to the 1910’s.

“New, old, horizontal, vertical, wide, narrow, white, black, open, enclosed – all these contrasts establish the range of oppositions that define the new Fondazione. By introducing so many spatial variables, the complexity of the architecture will promote an unstable, open programing, where art and architecture will benefit from each other’s challenges.”

Rom Koolhaas

Below some of Betye Saar’s creations.

I notices that a comun theme of the artist is the sky. In every creation introduces elements like the moon in all of her phases, and the stars. I find it fascinating. I will study her work better because I want to know more about it.

The exhibition is open until 8/01/2017

Another artist that didn’t let me indifferent regarding his work, is the american William N. Copley ( 1919-1996 ). In Paris in the early 1950s, Copley developed a unique and ribald figurative style that bucked prevailing trends toward abstraction. As Copley was developing his distinctively guileless, heart-on-sleeve storytelling voice, his early works from the 1950s and 1960s—many of which were made in France—took inspiration from Surrealist painting, Mexican folk art, and American cartoon and silent-movie imagery. Throughout his career, Copley repeatedly returned to subjects like nudes, cars, nationalism, and the doggerel poetry of Robert W. Service, the “Bard of the Yukon.” Later works illustrate Copley’s continual stylistic development and his abiding interest in political and psychosexual themes, surrealist visual punning, and vaudevillian Americana. Stylistically diverse, these works also reflect an awareness of developments in contemporary art and his role as a link between Surrealist and Pop circles.