Alessandro Mendini's Age of Metals.

"The Age of Metals," the exhibition curated by Stephan Hamel with the special participation of Francesca Alfano Miglietti, dedicated to the story of artist, poet, planner and designer Alessandro Mendini, has opened to the public until May 20, 2023, at M77 Gallery, Via Mecenate 77, Milan.

A major exhibition project born from the desire of gallery owners Giuseppe Lezzi and Emanuela Baccaro of M77 Gallery to show an unprecedented vision of the eclectic architect and theorist.

Metal thus becomes the common denominator to describe the kaleidoscopic activity of an artist who has made a profound mark on the history of international design and art.

Alessandro Mendini's intention was to infuse objects with a soul, because an object is never just a tool; it establishes intimate relationships with the psyche, fragility and uncertainties of people according to ritual and ceremonial attitudes.

For Mendini, every object is a symbol, it is a fetish, it is the fruit of utopias and loves, and the energy it expresses is a narrative that gives identity to the silent forms of things, as if each object reflects its history through structure, surface, color and materials.

More than 55 works, including some extraordinary unpublished ones, thus investigate the metallic soul of the Master, who passed away in 2019, who left as his recognizable creative method the vision of the project as art and art as project.

The curatorial choice takes its cue from Alessandro Mendini's interest in the use of gold as the tower of the Groningen Museum and of yellow and black in the checkered decoration of the bus shelter in Hannover, or in some installations of the early 1990s, where this checkerboarding expands and invades the surfaces of walls, paintings, objects and sculptures.

The M77 gallery spaces present in dialogue some of the many objects that express this interplay of the juxtaposition of the two colors and materials such as the gilded bronze of Dürer's Little Knight (D613 Studiolo, Grenoble), miniatures of Short Stories, precious gilded sculptures of some historical furniture conceived from the 1970s, in the Radical period to the reproduction in gold pendant jewelry of the Stilemes, recognizable graphic signs of his personal decorative alphabet (Alessandro Mendini. Things).

Interwoven in this iridescent constellation of Alessandro Mendini's works are materials such as the steel of the large Scivolavo chair (Short Stories), the gold leaf mosaic of the sculpture furniture (Bisazza); the ceramic of the Camino vases in 24 kt gold finish and matte platinum; and the Proust Marieda miniature in speckled coppered platinum (Alessandro Mendini. Cose) and finally the glass of the Rombo vase, in the new uranium coloring, made by Lasvit, following the tradition of the master glassmakers in Bohemia.

Silver, enamel, and copper are the materials chosen by Alessandro Mendini for his tribute to the Italian Futurists, represented as faces and wall masks, sculptures made by Argenteria Pampaloni of Florence.

On display are some of the artist's original drawings and paintings, part of the Alessandro Mendini Archive.