Martina Simeti

Martina Simeti is proud to present Falli (Phalluses), the first solo exhibition by artist Davide Stucchi in Milan. The exhibition, open from 29 April to 5 June 2021, marks the opening of the new Martina Simeti gallery venue in Via Benedetto Marcello 44, in what used to be a sex shop.

The title chosen by the Milanese artist pays homage to an exhibition by Walter Albini in 1977 at the Eros Gallery in Milan, where the fashion designer chose to poke fun at fashion figures and at fashion itself, presenting a series of sculptures of dressed-up phalluses. The installation proposed by Davide consists of a series of marker drawings on paper, a corpus he has been working on since 2013, going back to certain subjects and accumulating various versions of them. In just a few strokes, the drawings sum up allegories between desire and body parts, penises that form the fingers of a hand, buttocks, mouths, smiles and swimming costumes, as well as evening gowns worn by phalluses. Accompanying this drawing project is a series of drapes evoking the atmosphere of PLANET SEX – the sex shop that occupied the gallery premises up until a few months ago – reconstructed through images found online, in which an acrylic curtain stood out leading down to the basement. For Davide, the drape serves as the key to the installation. It becomes a threshold, almost a portal leading the visitor towards the ‘other’, whether it is a bare space or the intimate and personal evocation captured by a drawing.

In an attachment above is presented the transcription of a conversation at a distance between Davide and his friend the artist Tomaso De Luca. A tribute to the famous phone calls of Franca Valeri, in which each voice blends into the other and turns it into dialogue in a continuous flow of communication.