A Journey through Art & Design signed by Claudio Pironi

From November 10th 2017 to April 6th 2018, the most chameleon-like hotel in the city, will host new and surprising exponents of the art and design world, who will be exhibiting their works here over the next six months. The unconventional spaces of Nhow Milano are the perfect location for expressing the contemporary and versatile nature of this extraordinary exhibition entitled “I did it!” while pursuing its hidden and revealed meanings.

Claudio Pironi and his eclectic architecture will be part of the exhibition with Visible Invisible Bridges a piece of art that investigate the concept of space conception and perception in Western and Japanese Kabuki Theatre, as well as a hymn of beauty to this form of art. We asked Claudio Pironi a couple of question about the piece.

Why turning from Architecture & Design to Art?

At least for 2 reasons. Art made it possible to explore new lands. It made it possible to investigate and show how architecture of spaces affect relations. Moreover I loved to play with material expressiveness potential, and this exhibition allowed me to use them as icon of something else. In Visible invisible Bridge Wood and Marble represent respectively Japan and the Western Theatre, in the mean while a vortex of words made of methacrylate, ideally form, the bridge that breaks the space.

Art and architecture share the deep compositive research that is behind every work. I think that this creative journey will positively influence my everyday job as designer of luxury retail and high-end residential spaces.

Tell us something more about Kabuchi and Western Theatre Architecture.

Scenic-space design and “pièce” design work as multi-faceted instruments that create the most diverse feelings to the theatre goer. The arrangement of space, in particular, triggers the research of different varieties of relations.

At the Kabuki Theatre, there is no separation between the scene and the parterre: the architectural element, that better represents this symbiosis of space is the Hanamichi, a runway that begins on stage and runs across the audience. The scenic-fiction is ensured by using elements that are conventionally accepted as “unreal”, the audience is aware to be participating to an allegory and pliantly welcomes the rules of acting. There distances are nullified.

In opposition the Western Classic Theatre approach is totally different as the stage and parterre coexist as separate realities, sliced by an invisible screen, the imaginary fourth wall. During the twentieth-century the innovative european scenes, from Pirandello to Brecht, changed the language of theatre, by breaking the invisible wall and by using new narrative techniques that created a visual “non sequitur” associated to art and architecture. This broke the separation in a post-modern interpretation.

The screen breaking issue is a prevailing topic as Kevin Spaces’s intimate conversations to the audience, in the “House of Cards”.

Why you decided to deal with Japanese and Western World?

Visible/Invisible bridge take part in the art current fostered by Farm Cultural Park, an independent cultural centre, in connection with the 150th anniversary of the relationship between Italy and Japan. I am deeply fascinated both from architecture and japanese art. Japanese contemporary architecture best represent the kind of minimalism that is the best possible synthesis born from high complexity and deep design research, as shown in Kengo Kuma or Sou Fujimoto works.