Bianco
25.11.2023–31.07
“What is this story of ‘whiteness’ about?” Captain Ahab must have thought when he heard about the white whale Moby Dick for the first time. And visitors entering the Palazzo Bellini, in the historic centre of Oleggio might well ask the same question when recovering from their amazement at precious stuccos, frescoes, and wooden ceilings restored to their original splendour, they notice the presence of contemporary works of art.
Bianco
“What is this story of ‘whiteness’ about?” Captain Ahab must have thought when he heard of the white whale Moby Dick for the first time. And visitors entering the Palazzo Bellini in the historic centre of Oleggio might well ask the same question when, recovering from their amazement at precious stuccos, frescoes, and wooden ceilings restored to their original splendour, they notice the presence of contemporary works of art. Not many, at the wish of the collectors themselves. “We wanted to give space to the space, preferring to let the building speak, in harmony with the works”, says Laura. “Imagine two musical instruments playing together in perfect synergy, neither one dominating the other.”
“What is this story of ‘whiteness’ about?” Captain Ahab must have thought when he heard of the white whale Moby Dick for the first time. And visitors entering the Palazzo Bellini in the historic centre of Oleggio might well ask the same question when, recovering from their amazement at precious stuccos, frescoes, and wooden ceilings restored to their original splendour, they notice the presence of contemporary works of art. Not many, at the wish of the collectors themselves. “We wanted to give space to the space, preferring to let the building speak, in harmony with the works”, says Laura. “Imagine two musical instruments playing together in perfect synergy, neither one dominating the other.”
So in approximately 500 m2, on two floors, we find a total of twenty-five works from the 1950s to the present day. Except for a few permanent ones, they are characterized by a common element: the colour white. Videos, photographs, pictorial and sculptural works collected over the years and selected for the inaugural exhibition of SPA | Spazio Per Arte (space for art). “White represents the synthesis of my life”, explains Luigi Giordano. I spent thirty years dedicated to milk in the family dairy company founded by my father. And many of the works of art that I found in my free time, on trips around the world with my wife are, unconsciously, characterised by the colour white.”
In the context of SPA, talking about the colour white also means talking about all the other colours and abandoning oneself to the harmony of the place until you get to the works that could leave you speechless. This is not because we have nothing to say, on the contrary. Silence may just be another way of expressing oneself. If we think about the abundant rhetoric that often resounds loudly from the walls of our museums, our homes, on our social profiles and then look at the works on display, it will be natural to ask ourselves how we arrived at such a silence, which clearly assails us.
Mixing languages, tickling the senses, encouraging questions: this is what collectors Laura and Luigi Giordano hope to stimulate in guests during their visit to Palazzo Bellini.
“It would be nice to ask to visit the exhibition without a cell phone and without being able to take photos,” Laura, Luigi and I thought one day.
A