“Without waiting for any imprimatur, for the past decade or so Peter Wüthrich has been entrusting his entire imagery to the book. Mind you, the action he undertakes has nothing literary about it, since its domain is image, color, space and its perception. But it is also a behavioristic projection that disposes the book, like the alter ego, to perform in unpredictable ways, the exposition of which has little of the objective and much more of the anthropological.”

Cimiano is a crossroads of access to the city, perhaps the district of Milan most affected by ancient and recent immigration. Here, where different realities and cultures coexist, Wüthrich crossed the most popular places in the area (square, library, oratory, subway, playgrounds, supermarkets…) proposing boys and girls to participate in the construction of a work of art. Thanks to a simple trick (an open book on the shoulders that becomes a pair of wings) the young inhabitants have transformed into angels: messengers, guides, winged protectors.

The photographs taken by Peter Wüthrich with the neighborhood kids speak of diversity and integration with a light and smiling language, although the themes they suggest are not always so. Even though they represent humanity and a specific urban context, they surprisingly end up representing the outskirts of any other metropolis in the world, and for this reason they also take on an emblematic value, full of suggestions.

The material collected and produced by Peter Wüthrich is the subject of an exhibition of posters displayed in the streets of the city (from 15 October) and, from 27 October at ASSAB ONE, of an installation created by the artist, in which the photos are presented in the context in which the project was born and took shape. On this occasion the artist’s book Angeli di Cimiano – Milan will also be presented.

Angeli di Cimiano – Milano is the third stage of the project that the artist began in Los Angeles in 2001 and continued in Santiago de Compostela in 2004. Los ángeles de Santiago de Compostela, presented in 2004 at the CAGC, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporaneo of Santiago, uses large format photographs to describe a journey along the streets of the city center with young “angels” acting as guides.