Around books: from Art to Design.

Another everyday object: the book. The exhibition “Around books: from Art to Design” – from 5 April to 6 May 2013 at Museo Poldi Pezzoli – investigated its environs, exploring not the book in itself as a paper product, but the entire universe of design objects and actions gravitating around it: from the bookmark to the bookstand, the bookcase to the reading lamp.
“These are types of objects – the curator Beppe Finessi explained – we are always on the lookout for, things we like to collect, just as we collect beloved tomes. A world of ‘things’ specifically suited to their existence: a myriad of bookmarks in the widest range of materials and the most sophisticated forms, a series of bookstands, a sequence of bookends, very particular shelves, ‘book’ lamps; as well as furnishings, tables, chairs, armchairs whose essence and reason for being are connected with the books themselves.”
The show featured over 100 works, including design objects and furnishings, created by the most outstanding figures of international design.

Great masters like Cini Boeri, Gae Aulenti, Giotto Stoppino, along with Franco Raggi, Giulio Iacchetti, Martí Guixé, Gabriele Pezzini, Matteo Ragni, Paul Cocksedge, Ross Lovegrove and Marco Ferreri. There were also pieces by contemporary artists who have always focused on the book as a world apart, including Stefano Arienti, with a work created precisely for this event.
“Few objects like the book are at the centre of discussion and research on the possibility of future developments and changes”, Finessi said. “But beyond the necessary and in some ways indispensable technological innovations that have already changed its essence and transformed its substance, the book as an object, the paper book, which we still have the pleasure of browsing through, holding, even sniffing, demonstrates with force and energy that it possesses the intrinsic characteristics that make it immortal.”
“Intorno al libro”, the exhibition curated by “INVENTARIO”, was coordinated and sponsored by Foscarini. This choice reflects the company’s versatile approach: to create interaction amongst different art forms – design, photography, painting, sculpture – to offer viewers new and unusual experiences.