
Pierluigi Cerri, Limits, Exercises in style, Ace Gallery, New York, 2000
Born in 1939 in Italia, Cerri became architect and designer, following the courses of Politecnico de Milano. He participated in the foundation of Gregotti & Associati, winning lots of prizes. But he also made is path in design, through the designing of different publication houses. Here is the example of one of his design works.
Limits is a conceptual work conceived with the intent of defining and representing a space through the construction of its enclosures, its boundaries, its limits.
The exhibition is defined by concentric fences that define the architecture, the construction:
the wall of the hall that marks the dividing line between the outside and the inside and delimits the setting space ; the wall cladding emphasises the closure of the space but, at the same time, amplifies the image outwards through the reflecting surface of the aluminium;
the water basin, a metaphor of a natural boundary, retraces the perimeter of the wall and defines the central space of the exhibition ; the central platform, a real “representation” scene, and a space in space, isolated in the center of the room ; the ‘sky’, upper limit, consisting of a ‘cloud’ made of a parachute sheet, inflated with pressure air.
Inside Limits the space is always moving, in tension, so much so that it is practically impossible to photograph: the water of the pool, slightly rippled, and the light are reflected, on the smooth surface of the walls covered with thin sheets of steel; the cloud swells and deflates; a staircase, apparently suspended in the void as suspended above the water and defines the central platform, stands out upwards.
The intent is to return a metaphorical vision of nature through the use of artifices and constructive expedients; artifice eliminates the material of the construction contributing to create an abstract image, a mental vision, oneiric, whose constructive fact, carefully concealed, appears evident only from the relationship between drawings and images.
The whole exhibition is organized around those six elements :
Limiti / Limits;
Sogni materiali / Material Dreams;
Organicismo domestico / Domestic Organicism;
Dis-gluzioni / Dis-junction;
Comunicazione domestica/ Domestic Communication;
Questa non e una casa / This is not a House;
Source : Archilovers, Wikipedia