31 authors for thirty chars.The last century left an inheritance of a revolutionary paradigm, yet one difficult to renew. Starting out from a clamorous case of ‘breaking with the modern’, Supercolla addresses the codes of modernity through the eyes of the last three generations of designers and artists – often placed before comparisons with the past rather than a blank sheet on which to come up with something anew.
The project grapples with the loss of long-term functionality of a modern icon: the ‘Superleggera’ chair, designed by Gio Ponti for Cassina in 1955, and which went on to become a synonym of the very word ‘design’. Overlooking any debate on the dividing lines between art and design, amid compulsive conservational instincts and iconoclastic temptations, 31 artists and designers are invited to ‘repair’ just as many ‘semi-readymades’, midway between their use and non-use. [Excerpt from the press release]
