The sense of things

Enel France is supporting an exhibition dedicated to Bruno Munari taking place at Frac Ile-de-France/Le Plateau in Paris from 15 December to 26 February, 2012.

"Art is continuous search, assimilation of past experience and addition of new experiences in the form, content, materials, techniques and resources" says Bruno Munari. The designer, painter, sculptor, author of children's books, and his world, is the subject of the "Sense of things" exhibition taking place from 15 December to 26 February, 2012, at the Frac Ile-de-France/Plateau de Paris, with the support of Enel France. Moving and spreading in the daily life of Munari's continued research on the circulation and instability of forms, signs, colours, light, words, images, the artist has continually combined imagination and method and logical and intuitive invention, within an approach to the pursuit of the essentiality of things.
From the first futurist paintings of the 1930s to the unreadable books, from useless machines to talking talks, from the original xerographies to the high-voltage structures of the 1990s, throughout his life Munari has played categories and disciplines with great economy of means in an attempt to blend them into a single radical and generous practice of art, encouraging everyone to develop their own sense of curiosity and creativity.

The energy of thought

More prospective than retrospective, this exhibition does not so much seek, however, to focus on his legacy and his influences, as to put in motion, ideas and forms, his work within other artistic practices. It brings together on the same plane paintings, prototypes, multiples, design objects, books, M. Munari's games, and the works of artists of different generations and nationalities, sharing an attitude and a spirit inspired by play, honesty, economics, poetry. Every summer for ten years building and dismantling a wooden pyramid on top of a mountain and waiting for lightning to strike it, sending daily photo-montage letters to friends or strangers, holding a gallery in his hat, reproducing camera movement through abstract paintings, building a house on conversation foundations, making murals using a football, making sculptures with wire or taking them with him on trips are some of the actions and works that one can see there.

A "group" exhibition

Offering an open situation where the route matters more than the final destination, where process and shared experience often prevail over results, this "group" exhibition suggests perceptible conceptual contact between these different contemporary and historical practices, in what they share and in what clashes. Personal or collective approaches that, in a sort of defiance against the notion of a work of art as a finished and fetishised object, prefer a piecemeal and subjective relationship to the work, understood as precarious, transitory, multiple. We only come to know "the heart of things" through the feelings they awaken in us. This is what forms mono no aware, the Japanese literary principle, defining the emotions that arise in us when we are in contact with facts and things as the only way to know their essence. "The sense of things" is a possible but elusive translation. The group of exhibiting artists includes Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe, Isabelle Cornaro, Julien Crépieux, Robert Filliou, Martino Gamper, Ryan Gander, Mark Geffriaud, Ray Johnson, Chitti Kasemkitvatana, Cyrille Maillot, Bruno Munari, Emilie Parendeau,
The Play, Bruno Persat, Pratchaya Phinthong, Chloé Quenum, Clément Rodzielski, Fred Sandback and Mieko Shiomi.

A chronicler of the era

In his career as a photographer Riccardi tried to show life in several guises: the street was his theatre, the stage on which a unique Italian lifestyle was acted out and even became legendary. He also immortalized anonymous characters, such the first women in the workplace, which was a novelty in 1950s Italy. That is why Riccardi is regarded as a chronicler of the era. As in the Commedia all'italiana which uses laughter in an oblique but nonetheless serious evocation of Italian social, political and cultural issues, the exhibition also seeks to provide a snapshot of Italian society in the 50s and 60s. So, alongside images of Italian and international stars, there photographs, for example, of young girls queuing in front of Titanus studios waiting for an audition (1954), or well-dressed ladies taking part in the Tenth International Elegance Competition (1957).