contessanally: Vicenza: The Bisazza Foundation opening party - John Pawson

photograph courtesy Bisazza Foundation by Alberto Ferrero

photograph and copyright manfredi bellati

Montecchio - Vicenza: Fondazione Bisazza. Fondazione Bisazza, a new cultural space dedicated to contemporary design and architecture officially opened to the public with a VIP cocktail party and dinner. The project of the Foundation, a private non-profit organization, arose from the attention and sensitivity towards the culture of design and architecture that have always driven the glass mosaic making company. The Bisazza Foundation has a dual vocation: it is intended as an exhibition space to bring together works and installations by contemporary designers and architects who, over the course of the last twenty years, have created original applications for mosaics; it is also proposed as a cultural subject in continuous interaction with other international institutions for the purposes of hosting projects and exhibitions of design and architecture, not necessarily associated with mosaics.

John Pawson and Rosella Bisazza

Fondazione Bisazza: John Pawson Plain Space exhibition. To mark the opening of the Bisazza Foundation, until July 29, the exhibition, John Pawson – Plain Space, dedicated to the work of the British designer known for his ‘minimalist’ approach to design and architecture. Direct from its successful showing at the Design Museum, London, the exhibition, was presented for the first time in Italy.

photographs courtesy Bisazza Foundation

Fondazione Bisazza: John Pawson. For the opening of The Bisazza Foundation, John Pawson produced an original, site-specific work, 1:1 One to One using mosaics for the first time in his career. The installation will remain on display to enhance the Permanent Collection.

photograph and copyright manfredi bellati

Fondazione Bisazza: John Pawson Plain Space exhibition. The “John Pawson - Plain Space” exhibition celebrates John Pawsons career from the early 1980s to date and it presents his architecture and product designs characterized by visual clarity, simplicity and grace. The exhibition includes a selection of landmark commissions such as the Sackler Crossing in London, see below, the Cistercian Monastery in the Czech Republic and Calvin Klein’s iconic flagship store in New York as well as current and future projects.

Above. Two Houses – St. Tropez, France, 2006, in progress – model: 1:100 card. Project architect, Douglas Tuck.

Fondazione Bisazza: John Pawson Plain Space exhibition. The Design Project Table, in the foreground Five Items, When Object Works, Knokke, Belgium.

  Fondazione Bisazza: John Pawson Plain Space exhibition. B60 Sloop – Kiel Germany 2007 – Model 1:30 scale. B60 is a 60-foot sailing boat designed in collaboration with Luca Brenta Yacht Design and built in Kiel. Externally the yacht has a rare graphic clarity, expressed in the transom’s Almost Nothing, applied in the palest grey tints. Below Deck the conjunction of light, shadow and reflections on high-gloss white surfaces is used to manipulate the eye’s experience of space.

John Pawson and a photograph and sketch of Sackler Crossing, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London.

Journalist Cristina Morozzi and the Design Museum, London director Deyan Sudjic.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection. Mimmo Palladino, Buon Viaggio e Buona Fortuna, 2006. Palladino always represents the world as a sequence of events where men and spirits converge and move apart in the midst of symbols and mysterious alphabet. In this room the alphabet is less mysterious, not just because it is clearly propitious for our difficult passage in the world, but also because Palladino illustrates it with iconic objects, immortalized in colors of traditional mosaic: the red and gold for good luck, the blue wave of the liquid womb from which we have come to which we would rather perhaps like to return.

   Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection. Alessandro Mendini room, Mobili per Uomo, Furniture for Man, 1997/2008. “…. These items of furniture feature elements which symbolize or describe contemporary man: his face, a glove, an elegant shoe, an evening jacket, a neoclassical teacup, a bedside lamp, a manager’s briefcase, a Borsalino cap and a star. What makes them unique is their gigantic proportions. They’re not normal, but massively blown up. The are macro sized objects: gigantic, off-the-scale creations which represent in part the decomposition, the breaking down of bourgeois man, a giant character transformed into a collage. Deconstruction and reconstruction of contemporary man as the monument to the norm. A series of fragments of his body, elevated to fetish status, clothes and items, evocative of emotions and distant rooms. Deviant dimensions, a game of pursuit of size, of non-existent relationships and behavior, played out in a mysterious golden aura, which expands and reflects on isolated, solitary items of a man who has become the symbol of himself. Self-contemplation and self-description, a tribute also to the pictorial macro-miniatures of Domenico Gnoli. Metaphysical? Man is under analysis, a magnifying glass blows him up and coldly puts him under the spotlight: as a thing and a psyche. And while objects assume gigantic proportions, the rooms containing them become tiny, in a disconcerting series of meanings. The balance is broken, all proportion is lost, vertigo takes over, size has disappeared, these classic residual traces of mental man have become merely a game, a trompe l’oeil: little and large, huge and opposite.” Alessandro Mendini.

Fondazione Bisazza. “Backstage” photo shot for Spanish AD. Designers Arik Levy, Fabio Novembre, Alessandro Mendini, Aldo Cibic and editor of Disegno magazine and member of the Bisazza Advisory Board Stefano Casciani have fun before the group photo.

Fondazione Bisazza. “Backstage” photo shot for Spanish AD. Sitting on top of Alessandro Mendini’s Poltrona di Proust Monumentale. 2005. On the seat: John Pawson, vice president of the Foundation, Rosella Bisazza and on the ladder the Fondazione’s president Piero Bisazza. Standing: Carlo Dal Bianco, Hervé Chandès, Stefano Casciani, Guta Moura Guedes, Maria Cristina Didero, Fabio Novembre, Alessandro Mendini, Aldo Cibic, Anna Gili. Sitting: Alexander Von Vegesack and Arik Levy.

Fondazione Bisazza. “Backstage” photo shot for Spanish AD. Gentelmanly, Fabio Novembre helps Rosella Bisazza get down from Mendini’s gigantic Poltrona di Proust Monumentale.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection - Mini Wears Bisazza. For the Fuori Salone 2005 Mini Tartan. Mini asked Bisazza to design five tailored outfits perfectly expressing the close relationship between fashion and design. The tartan outfit recalls the traditional British style. A blatant demonstration of the two brands ability to look at the past through a contemporary lens.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection. Fabio Novembre’s Love over All, 2003.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection - Fabio Novembre, Godot, 2003. The large mask symbolizes the dialectic, the interplay between appearances and reality, life and theatre, spirit and material. The mask has two faces: the front is metal, whilst the inside is completely covered with hand-made gold tesserae.

Fondazione Bisazza. One of the patios, the exhibition space was designed by Carlo dal Bianco.

Guta Moura Guedes director of Experimenta Design and member of the Bisazza Advisory Board and the editor in chief of Italian Elle Décor Livia Peraldo Matton.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection. Arik Levy’s chandelier.

Francesca Taroni editor in chief of Case da Abitare.

Architect Peter Weiss and designer Anna Gili.

photograph courtesy Fondazione Bisazza by Alberto Ferrero

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection – Studio Job room – Silverware, 2007. “… In our work, Nynke and I convey the content of a “dimensional diary” which deals with the surreal and the pop like adventures of a boy and a girl who traverse a bittersweet world. The story tells of a suite an evil suppressive dictator – seated high on his throne – and the curiosities cabinet with dubious experiments of a quack. The polished bourgeoisie pitted against the selfless heroics of Robin Hood. Workers and farmers who tolerate suffering and perpetually innocent animals. It is this very order of things that seems to separate man from animal and conveys an invisible yet ruthless, powerful boundary, which actually does not exist. Observers find Silverware is monumental and amplified. Conversely, Nynke and I think of it in terms of ‘reduce and amaze’.” Job Smeets (2008).

Oliver Jahn editor in chief of German Architectural Digest.

Paolo Bercah, Dedar’s Caterina Fabrizio, Azucena’s Marta Sala and Dedar’s Raffaele Fabrizio.

Aldo Cibic and his wife Cinzia.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection – Aldo Cibic, Antalya, Chair 1994/2004. “This is a project that emanates vitality. While I was designing it I was very pleased because the unique language I saw behind it was basic, Neo-plastic; pure geometric shapes that I could use to express my vision. I took various standard objects, for example the wood bench, which when covered in mosaics became something completely different. Even the chair is an “attachment” of signals: an organic element and an occasional table. The marvelous thing is that the underlying structure (made of wood, aluminum, iron etc.) gains a new life by using mosaics and anything becomes possible.” Aldo Cibic.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection - Marcel Wanders – Bisazza Motel and Ante-Lope, 2004. Along with the tall tower designed as model of the Bisazza Hotel, also on display the imaginative and surprisingly, functioning car, Ante-Lope, with a chassis clad with beautiful pop mosaic. The patterns used throughout the installation, traditional fabric patterns, floral arrangements, textures from nature or photographic images, confirm the fairytale allure of Marcel Wander’s work. According to the designer’s vision, objects and environments should confer happiness on those who come in contact with them.

Lighting designer and journalist Marco Pollice.

Risotto Primavera.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection.

Jaime Hayon's Jet Set, 2008.

Member of the Bisazza Advisory Board and CEO of Established and Sons Maurizio Mussati.

photograph and copyright by manfredi bellati

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection. Jaime Hayon’s Bisazza Vases installation.

Italian sushi, smoked salmon and salmon eggs.

Architect, Luca Bombassei photographed in front of the Ettore Sottsass room.

Fondazione Bisazza: Permanent collection - Ettore Ritrovati Frammenti di Mosaico, 2005/2006. Ettore Sottsass’s sketches for Ritrovati Frammenti di Mosaico.

Super art P.R. Paola Manfredi and Dove magazine’s Susanna Perazzoli.

Fondazione Bisazza. Design gallery owner and scout Paola Colombari and design producer Marco Ambrosini. Paola is wearing a ring designed by Antonio Cagianelli and Gaetano Pesce bracelets.