Valentina Cameranesi tackles the impulse to create the world in her image, examining the possibility of happiness for the eyes. Five windows open onto the exhibition – as though viewpoints into the designer’s interior landscape – to explicitly reveal the cardinal elements of her work: themes, languages and interlocutors. New materials (such as metal), are placed alongside her materials of choice (fabrics, ceramic), highlighting the latest developments in an intense and complex project that has rarely been seen until today.
The viewer’s gaze is directed through an understated atmosphere in an apparent comfort zone that transcends rules and definitions. But the unconscious is at work, and closer observation reveals disturbing elements, subtle interferences to the superficial harmony. This background noise is the real key to understanding this creative process. Within an uninterrupted play of references (the 80s and 90s, clichés, literature, frames from films and videos, etc.), Cameranesi conducts a process of appropriation, elaboration and restitution of a new form. A practice that is aware of the past but concentrated on the present, involving the production of objects as well as intervention in the space. In this case, the designer modifies standard industrially-produced elements and processes them through her personal filter to make them an integral part of her vision.
This study is about the mechanisms of desire, using photography to convey suggestions and – once again – control the gaze. This is the abstract reconstruction of a phase of Valentina Cameranesi’s work that is both important and transitory, created to allow free immersion in her imagination.
This exhibition is dedicated to the eyes alone, without presumptuous captions or definitions.