TransFORMing
exhibition at Architektur im Magazin, Vienna, 2022












 

Since the beginning of its existence, mankind has transformed things in order to produce novelties. The outcome of such transformations is an increasingly complex world where history, culture, technology, and nature constantly change. This exhibition reflected on such topic, while referring to Hans Hollein’s “MAN Transforms”, an exhibition he curated in New York City in 1973. This was done in an attempt of engaging directly with the topic: the exhibition itself is a transformation of a former exhibition, in turn about transformation. The objective was double. On the one hand, this show repurposed Hollein’s work. On the other hand, the exhibition elaborated a new iteration, a formal transformation, of the original. One of the gallery’s spaces was a reproduction of Hollein’s work (translation) for his exhibition.This was a phantom: a ghost of an old exhibition that, despite being of the past, is still relevant today. More specifically, it elaborates the famous grid of loaves of bread (each different, but all the same) transforming it into a spatial grid. The main space was instead about the transformation of the exhibition into something new: a transforming of “Transfom.” This piece was itself the result of a series of formal transformations, leaving traces in the gallery’s spaces. The outcome was a structure based on the already mentioned grid: a broken cube, contaning 3d printed vases, each one the outcome of a novel transformation: bread, 3d scanned, has been interpolated with the base of a doric column (itself a symbol of familiarity in western culture), to produce something novel. This objects are vases, sculptures, architectural elements, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, showing the still relevant possibilities of the figurative.