Mystical Solace

The installation by De Allegri and Fogale in Milan could be a part of a temple, something like half of a church, or a place/time in which to suspend everything and one’s self.

De Allegri e Fogale, Mystical Solace, installation view, Dome Milano Interior, 2017. Photo Delfino Sisto Lignani and Marco Cappelletti
It could be a part of a temple, something like half of a church, or a place/time in which to suspend everything and one’s self in the name of a ritual yet to be invented. Designed by De Allegri and Fogale, the space gathers forms and symbols: stairs to ascend without a mooring; thresholds to be crossed, with emphasis on a possible transformation; surreal, haptic objects to be caressed with the eyes and the hands; boulders like talismans; stones like mirrors. The installation is completely contained within a triangle (magical geometry par excellence) charged with signs, alive thanks to those who will cross its thresholds, who will activate it by inhabiting it: some, but not all, equipped with a certain inclination to the mystical and to ritual.

 

The gesture, full of irony and power, has prompted Casone and the designers of De Allegri and Fogale, during FuoriSalone, to set up this mausoleum portion, characterised by uncertain spiritual allusions. The reference, more or less explicit, more or less provocative, is that of the contemporary and widespread need to  aunt a mystical detachment from the world and from the daily, buzzing, fast pace of things: if this need is fully justified, increasingly it seems to stumble over exquisitely Western practices that are, to say the least, curious, sometimes fake, far from any form of authenticity.

De Allegri and Fogale, Mystical Solace, installation view, Dome Milano Interior, 2017. Photo Delfino Sisto Lignani and Marco Cappelletti
De Allegri and Fogale, Mystical Solace, installation view, Dome Milano Interior, 2017. Photo Delfino Sisto Lignani and Marco Cappelletti
Yellow Siena marble and Noir Doré are two extremely difficult stones, and their characteristic aesthetic power and drama are derived in part from their very fragility. Further, simply to be able to work these stones, a treatment to make them more compact is necessary: to attempt the acrobatics proposed in De Allegri and Fogale’s design was no mean feat. The technique is Florentine intarsia. The Yellow Siena is engraved and cut with CNC machines, and the drawings/imprint obtained in this way are then filled – in this case with Noir250 Doré or Rameggiato Green marble (the other stone used in the installation) – and together they are calibrated and polished as if they were a single piece. The collection of objects, on the other hand, has been worked by layering sheets of the two materials, creating mixed blocks and working them, once again, as if they were a single stone.
De Allegri and Fogale, Mystical Solace, installation view, Dome Milano Interior, 2017. Photo Delfino Sisto Lignani and Marco Cappelletti
De Allegri and Fogale, Mystical Solace, installation view, Dome Milano Interior, 2017. Photo Delfino Sisto Lignani and Marco Cappelletti

Mystical Solace
Design: De Allegri and Fogale
curated by Studio Vedèt with Matteo Fiorini
Dome Milano Interior
via S. Marco 1, Milan

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