1+1+1/2020

Hosted as usual on the ground floor of Assab One, 1+1+1 keeps on exploring the connections between art, architecture and design.

This fourth edition leaves behind the set up of three independent installations and becomes a single exhibition. Thanks to the interaction of many creative minds who have been sharing ideas about each project, the show merges different languages and knowledges and creates a unique connection between the three interventions. Not only the protagonists have been working in dialogue and shared concepts and layouts, but each project is the result of several different expertises.

Press Release

1+1+1

a project by Elena Quarestani

curated by Federica Sala

An edition featuring Loris Cecchini, Michele De Lucchi and AMDL CIRCLE, Pentagram & Friends

Since its first edition in 2017, 1+1+1 – a project originated from an idea by Elena Quarestani – has presented a series of investigations on art, design, and architecture within the spaces of Assab One by following a vectorial numeric sequence. The experience of every element has always been in conversation with the ones which followed, creating, layer after layer, a balanced dialogue.

On the contrary, this year’s reiteration goes beyond this dialogue among different arts for an approach that makes them speak in unison and breaks the isolation of the three usual monographic exhibitions to put them together into one larger, collective show.

Here, different authors present their works in conversation with one another, under the banners of interaction and, most of all, collaboration.

The idea of a larger show able to speak through one voice comes from the desire to foreground once again humanity as synonymous with community.

This togetherness approach is the rationale between the choice of the participants to the exhibition’s fourth edition: Loris Cecchini, with its modular, self-replicating structures; Michele De Lucchi together with the research group of the design studio AMDL CIRCLE and the London-based Pentagram, a firm born under the idea of cooperation, here in its further-enlarged version Pentagram & Friends.

Responding to this logic of collaboration, the different participants shared since the beginning ideas, concepts and designs to produce a coherent installation able to contain and exalt each part of it. Just like in any well-functioning community of humans.

The events of 2020 have ushered unprecedented historical conditions, thrusting all of us—like in a SCI-FI movie’s experiment—in the paradoxical predicament which we are currently experiencing: the by now familiar phenomenon of social distancing, whose long-term effects are yet to be reckoned.

To me and Elena, this exceptional moment we have found ourselves living in, has stressed the importance of humankind intended as a collectivity. For this reason, we felt the urgency to share with the public our thoughts as shaped by the interpretations and talent of the artists and makers on view.

It’s not by chance that Michele de Lucchi’s installation, which turns a primordial and familiar object such as a carpet in a piece of collective architecture, is titled Many Hands Make One—a manifesto for a collectivity carried to its extremes in which, as if in a virtuosic crescendo, many hands knit knots, which in turn become carpets, which in turn become houses, which in turn become a village, which in turn, which in turn…

A circular crescendo that interrogates the concepts of nature and artifice, as perfectly summarized by the arch-famous Sergio Endrigo’s song which says, “to make a tree you need a flower (…), to make a table you need a flower (…), to make everything you need a flower (…).

In the archeo-futurist backdrop of the exhibition contrasting colours and materials clash, turns our preconceptions upside down. We find a hint of nature in the steel modular sculptures of Loris Cecchini, whose work—characterised by an almost scientific approach—privileges the concept of a primary core starting from which big germinating structures ramify into space as if they were living entities. On the contrary, the archaic tiny houses by De Lucchi made of bamboo and kilim become a structural architectural element, in an inversion of material and symbolic hierarchies that reminds us of always shifting our perspective.

With their Home Poems, Pentagram & Friends, for their part, tinge the exhibition with a touch of irony and playfulness. Produced during the lockdown with the purpose to teach to appreciate objects in their mundane aspects, these ten brief videos turn, thanks to slight changes in point of view, every small gesture into a motor for good mood. They remind us that sense of humour is one of the healthiest and most peculiar resources the human animals possess—something that allows them to adapt to situations based on circumstances, just as plants do.

Federica Sala

Check out the interview

HERE you can find the video of Federica Sala’s interview to Michele De Lucchi

Look at Loris Cecchini's watercolors

LINK to all Loris Cecchini’s watercolors produced on the occasion of 1+1+1/2020 exhibition

Look at the pieces by Michele De Lucchi with AMDL Circle

LINK to the pieces designed by Michele De Lucchi with AMDL Circle on the occasion of 1+1+1/2020 exhibition

Biographies

Loris Cecchini

Loris Cecchini (1969) lives and works in Milan. One of the most prominent Italian artists on the international stage, he has exhibited his works throughout the world with solo exhibitions in prestigious museums such as Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de SaintÉtienne Métropole in Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, MoMA PS1 in New York, Shanghai Duolun MoMA of Shanghai, Museo Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela, Kunstverein of Heidelberg, Centro per lʼArte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato and Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan.
Loris Cecchini has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 56th, 51st and 49th Venice Biennale, the 6th and the 9th Shanghai Biennale, the 15th and 13th Rome Quadrennial, the Taiwan Biennale in Taipei, the Valencia Biennale in Spain and the Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (UABB) in Shenzhen, China.
Loris Cecchini has also taken part in several collective shows, including exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, PAC in Milan, Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, Macro Future in Rome, MART in Rovereto, Londonʼs Hayward Gallery, The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, Musée dʼArt Contemporain of Lyon, Shanghaiʼs MOCA, the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin and others.
He has created various permanent and site- specific installations, particularly at Villa Celle in Pistoia and in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels and for the Cleveland Clinicʼs Arts & Medicine Institute in the United States, at Les Terrasses Du Port in Marseille, and recently at the Shinsegae Hanam Starfield in Seoul and at the Cornell Tech Building in New York. www.loriscecchini.org

Michele De Lucchi and AMDL CIRCLE

Architect, Michele De Lucchi was a prominent figure in movements like Alchimia and Memphis.
He has designed furniture for the most known Italian and European companies.
For Olivetti he has been Director of Design from 1988 to 2002. He realized architectural projects in Italy and abroad, including cultural, corporate, industrial and residential buildings. For Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bundesbahn, Enel, Poste Italiane, Hera, Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit and other Italian and foreign banks he has designed working environments and corporate image. He developed important hospitality projects in Tbilisi (Georgia), Beijing (China), Rokkō-sab (Japan) and various part of Italy. He has planned buildings for museums as the Triennale di Milano, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Neues Museum in Berlin and the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan.
In 2000 he was appointed Officer of Italian Republic by President Ciampi.
In 2001 he has been nominated Professor at the IUAV in Venice. In 1996 he received the Honorary Doctorate from Kingston University. In 2008 he has been nominated Professor at the Design Faculty of the Politecnico of Milan and Member of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome. During 2018 Michele De Lucchi was editor in chief of the new “Domus” magazine.
Michele De Lucchi is founder and member of AMDL CIRCLE, a multidisciplinary group of thinkers and innovators. Since 2018, AMDL CIRCLE focuses on Earth Stations, future sharing architectures that combine technological development with humanist principles. https://amdlcircle.com

Pentagram & Friends

Pentagram is a multi-disciplinary, independently-owned design studio.
The works encompass graphics and identity, products and packaging, exhibitions and installations, websites and digital experiences, advertising and communications, sound and motion. The studio counts 25 partners in London and New York, all practicing designers working collaboratively or independently, and it’s the only major design studio where the owners of the business are the creators of the work. Pentagram and Friends is the group of people participating in the realization of Home Poems, the project started by Naresh Ramchandani*, producer and partner of the studio, with the texts of Henry Ponder, Twitter poet known for his gentle, witty reflections on everyday subjects.
Among the other friends (with a total of 19), are part of the group Steven Qua, designer and TV director, Kevin Macdonald, Oscar-winning director and producer known for the film The Last King of Scotland, Yuri Suzuki, sound artist, designer an electronic musician. https://www.pentagram.com

*Naresh Ramchandani, producer, after studying at Manchester University, he starts the copywriter carreer at HHCL in 1990. In 1994 Ramchandani moves to Chiat/Day and becomes the second youngest creative director in London. He evolved Chiat/Day into St Luke’s, Britain’s first co-operative agency, named Agency of the Year 1999. He founds Karmarama in 2000 and gets Karmarama’s anti-war poster, “Make Tea Not War”, into the front page of the Sunday Times in 2003. Leaves Karmarama in 2005. Becomes a Guardian columnist and writes 63 thought pieces. Writes and produces Dark Horse, an animation programme aired on Channel 4. In October 2007 co-founds Do The Green Thing, a non-profit public service that has so far inspired 40 million people worldwide to live a greener life. Joins Pentagram as a Partner in 2016. Makes a short film about Henry Ponder, which is commended and screened at Cannes 2015.

Federica Sala, after having spent several years as assistant curator in the design department of the Centre Pompidou, she moved back in Italy as independent curator for private and public institutions as the Centre Cultural Français in Milan, Fabrica and the agency H+ as project manger for Enel Contemporanea project at Macro Museum in Rome.
From 2010 to 2019 she founded and co directed the agency of design consultancy PS • design consultants.
She curated for three years the Object section, dedicated to design galleries, for miart, from 2015 to 2017 she was the curator of the 5VIE district, presenting some important exhibitions such as Exercises in seating by Max Lamb, Herringbones by Raw Edges, and Foyer Gorani. She just ended the four-year project Italian Villages created by Airbnb for site specific artist’s residences.
In 2018 she curated, with Patricia Urquiola, the exhibition A Castiglioni at Triennale di Milano (October 2018-January 2019) and the related catalogue, published by Electa.
From 2017 to 2019 she has been in the jury of PAD Prize Paris and since 2016 she’s in the living commission for ADI, from 2020 with role of vice coordinator.
She is the curator of Life In Vogue, a project by Condé Nast Italia (2018, 2019).
She is the art advisor for the Cassina Perspective in Art project launched in 2019 and on going. www.federica-sala.com

Elena Quarestani, an editor and a journalist in a previous life, has conceived, developed and edited magazines, encyclopaedias and partworks. It was only after her first exhibition in 2002 – considered a one-off event, a rite of passage for a former printing press establishment – that she decided to merge her passion for art and the building that hosted the family business.

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