Padiglione Italia / 122

At the Padiglione Italia in zona Ventura, designers explored the theme of dysfunction applied to typically Mediterranean subjects. Because creativity always means thinking outside the box.

Alberto Zanchetta is the curator of the exhibition “Disfunzione Mediterranea”, a theme chosen for reasons strongly linked to a vision of creativity.

“All creativity is inherently dysfunctional” he claims, “because it thinks beyond the norm, because it creates outside of the box, placing itself elsewhere. Taken individually, everyone is dysfunctional in one way or another: psychologically, emotionally, physically and so on. Each of us has some ‘imperfection’, a (healthy) defect that can make us unique, even original. The defect therefore becomes a characteristic; so, if everyone is different/dysfunctional from one another, why shouldn’t objects be too?”

The exhibition postulates error as added value and presents objects filled with meaning precisely because they are out of the ordinary. Contenitori Levante by Alessandro Zambelli is made stable thanks to the addition of a cap, a support not designed to be definitive; the forms of the Perspective tray by Alhambretto are deliberately distorted to remind us that the eye distorts reality and deceives us; the Nio mirror by CarusoD’angeliStudio is soft and invites us to find ourselves in its folds; The Perfect Knife by Ctrlzak is sharp on both sides. Finally the Anonimo Italiano container by Giulio Patrizi has cracks that allude to the state of neglect of art in Italy: damage owed to lack of attention becomes an inspiration for the design and rebirth of the object, that the designer ironically proposes as a colander demonstrating an all-Italian sense of humour.