Milano’ by Paola Pivi @ Moroso Flagship Store New York

More-So, the internal division of Moroso S.p.A. which develops research and experimentation projects for furnishings design, is delighted to announce “Milano” by the Italian artist Paola Pivi, realised in collaboration with Perrotin New York.

The work, a soft sculpture consisting of a multi-coloured stack of rich velvet mattresses with an upper part that floats in space, will be exhibited in the new Moroso Flagship Store at 105 Madison Avenue, NYC, from 1 March to 15 May 2023.

Patrizia Moroso, the company’s Artistic Director: “I had been cultivating a wish to work with Paola for a number of years. I have immense respect for her artistic achievements and her ability to create surprise through relationships that are as unexpected as they are powerful in arousing deep emotions. Paola takes a rigorous approach to her artistic work, paying great attention to the performative aspect, which is mainly functional in industrial design”.

A seductive space

“Milano” offers a playful and magnetic ambience in a seductive space of silky and brightly coloured velvets, impressively proportioned and with a surprising form that invites entry. It’s a work of art that functions as a piece of furnishings-design, enlivened and activated when someone enters it. The empty space between the two-coloured halves is open and comfortable, soft and smooth, and at the same time novel, strange and subtle –and unusual in allowing people to slip inside. A personal environment delimited by the primary colours of blue and red, offering a novel place to enter.

Paola Pivi, creator of the work: “I imagined a unique place of open function, a void for people to fill as they wish, or simply contemplate at home.”

Linking design and art

“Milano” was first exhibited in April 2022 as part of the artist’s solo exhibition “I Want It All”, curated by José Carlos Diaz at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA. José Carlos Diaz, curator of the exhibition: “With much gratitude to More-So, Paola Pivi’s most recent solo exhibition, “I Want it All” at The Andy Warhol Museum, allowed the artist to link design and art in the creation of the Milano series. This collaborative act of artistic experimentation led to the creation of functional sculpture activated by hundreds of participants, typically uncommon in museum settings. More-So understands that artists have no limitations!

Paola Pivi was born in Milan in 1971. She lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska. One of the leading artists of the contemporary international scene, she blends the familiar and the alien in her work, often using widely recognised objects modified in scale, material or colour, and stimulating people see things differently.

Transcending limits

Ranging between sculpture, video, photography, performance and installation, her work transcends perceived limits, making possible what once seemed impossible. We find zebras frolicking at the North Pole, brightly coloured polar bears practising yoga, a Piper Seneca aeroplane rising on the tips of its wings and constantly turning on itself or, as in the installation commissioned in 2022 by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, 250 pairs of shoes, 125 of them brand new and 125 matching pairs showing heavy wear, mounted like trophies on a wall to underline the performative activity and daily life common to all.

She has received several awards including the Golden Lion at the 48th Venice Biennale for the best national pavilion (shared with other female artists) and, in 2011, Fellowship of the American Academy in Rome. Her works are found in prestigious permanent collections, including those of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, and MAXXI the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome. She has exhibited in leading museums and galleries around the world.

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