Homo Faber Event

Paolo Rosselli

• Architekten

The exhibition project “Next of Europe” curated by the gallery owner Jean
Blanchaert is signed by Stefano Boeri Interiors

Two rooms, a "cabinet de curiosities" with more than 150 works on display,
an audiovisual installation and the performances by craftsmen at work to communicate the importance of preserving and passing on the art of European craftsmanship.

photo_credit Paolo Rosselli — Paolo Rosselli

Among the protagonists of the second edition of Homo Faber, the international exhibition promoting craftsmanship, there is Stefano Boeri Interiors - the multidisciplinary studio founded by architects Stefano Boeri and Giorgio Donà, which operates and develops projects and research in the field of interior architecture, exhibition design and product design - protagonist as always with Jean Blanchaert - also in the first edition of 2018 with the “River Europe” setting.

In the 2022 edition, Stefano Boeri Interiors signs the exhibition project of Next of Europe, the thematic exhibition curated by the gallery owner Jean Blanchaert assisted by Irina Eschenazi: a review of the best European masters of art - authentic "living treasures" as they are defined in Japan - and their magnificent objects.

The project spreads over two communicating rooms. In the first room, the audiovisual installation "INSTRUMENTS", created by the Italian artist and director Davide Rapp, welcomes the viewer by immersing him in the combination of sounds emitted by the tools used by the craftsmen. The projected video, composed of video extracts from the archive of the Cologni Foundation, combines a succession of images of hands at work with those of tools transformed into unexpected musical instruments, which, by progressive accumulation, define two alternating audiovisual montages as the music tracks on a single record.

An opening leads to the large exhibition hall where, like in a cabinet of curiosities, over 150 handcrafted objects of various kinds, shapes and sizes from all over Europe are collected in a large modular structure, which, with its 70 linear metres, occupies the entire perimeter of the room. Thanks to the imposing structure that suggests to the visitor a visual approach as a collector and bricoleur, the productions are displayed in their variety and complexity. In the installation by Stefano Boeri Interiors (as was already the case for "Fiume Europa", the installation designed in 2018 for the first edition of Homo Faber) the glance goes to their whole: it is their totality that constitutes the work itself.

In the centre of the room, there are the artisans’ workstations, distributed in no particular order. Circular-shaped workbenches surmounted by mirrored discs that allow an amplification of the viewer's perspective on the worktable, where the performances of the artisans take place with the intent, as in everyday life, to practice their craft and to pass on the techniques and gestures and knowledge.

“In designing the setting of the Sala degli Arazzi in Fondazione Giorgio Cini, we thought of a space that would give the visitor the freedom to move around and live an instantaneous and as exhaustive as possible experience of craftsmanship. The video installation and the play of reflections created by the mirrors on the ceiling make it possible for the hands, the work tools and the craftsmen themselves to become the protagonists of the large room and to tell the story, as in Jean Blanchaert's desire, of the attention and dedication that every single object on display requires to be produced" declare the architects Stefano Boeri and Giorgio Donà, co-founders of Stefano Boeri Interiors.