Parasimpatico by Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist
Parasimpatico
9 November–18 December 2011

Fondazione Nicola Trussardi at former Cinema Manzoni
Via A. Manzoni 40
Milan, Italy
Open daily, 11am–9pm.
Free admission.

info [​at​] fondazionenicolatrussardi.com

www.fondazionenicolatrussardi.com

Fondazione Nicola Trussardi is proud to present Parasimpatico, the first major solo show in an Italian institution by Pipilotti Rist. The setting for the Swiss artist’s new project is the former Cinema Manzoni, which for over fifty years was one of the most important movie theaters in Milan, and has been closed to the public since 2006.

Conceived for the evocative spaces of the former Cinema Manzoni, Parasimpatico combines older works with newly re-mixed pieces conceived for this show, which transports us into a world of floating visions, vibrant, psychedelic colors, hypnotic soundtracks, sensuality and ethereality.

Like a modern-day Pippi Longstocking, the heroine of children’s literature who inspired her nickname, Pipilotti Rist uses images to project yearnings and emotions, generating a new form of organic life that viewers can perceive with their bodies as well as their eyes. Often hidden in unexpected places—toilets, liquor bottles, seashells and handbags—or projected onto evocative surfaces—church ceilings or giant screens—her installations are explorations of the senses, all-enveloping experiences where any physical and psychological distance from the viewer is abolished.

The gateway into Pipilotti Rist’s work is our emotional side, the part that reacts involuntarily to external stimuli. This observation inspired the title for her exhibition with the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Parasimpatico: with her usual touch of humor, Pipilotti Rist is referring to the division of the nervous system that governs the body’s involuntary functions, such as digestion, relaxation, rest and energy storage. Her project transforms the theater into a huge, living creature, mingling cinema and television, hallucinations and high-definition images, dreams and reality: the sumptuously decorated spaces of the Manzoni—from the lobby to the grand staircase, and from the auditorium to the bar—are wrapped in a new skin of images, an enveloping carousel of sound, light and color that restores a joyous magic to what was once Milan’s most prestigious movie theater, in a final flutter of life before its definitive transformation.

Designed by architect Alziro Bergonzo and opened in 1950, the Cinema Manzoni is part of a stately edifice conceived to house shops and commercial venues on Via Manzoni, in the heart of Milan. With a surface area of over 5000 square meters, richly decorated and frescoed, an enormous 1400-seat auditorium, the Manzoni immediately came to be seen as the most elegant movie theater in the city, and was used as a location for important films such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s Story of a Love Affair (1950) and The Lady Without Camelias (1952). In 1955 it became the first movie theater in Italy, and the third in the world, to introduce Cinerama, an innovative three-screen panoramic projection system. These unique features made the Cinema Manzoni one of the most remarkable movie theaters in Milan and in the entire country for over fifty years, until it definitively closed on 25 September 2006.

With Parasimpatico, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi continues its nomadic exploration of Milan, rediscovering forgotten places and hidden treasures in the heart of the city and bringing them back to life through contemporary art. After major solo shows by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Darren Almond, Maurizio Cattelan, John Bock, Urs Fischer, Anri Sala, Paola Pivi, Martin Creed, Pawel Althamer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Tino Sehgal, Tacita Dean, and Paul McCarthy, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi is now proud to present this new large-scale project by Pipilotti Rist—her first solo show with an Italian institution—as part of the calendar of events organized throughout 2011 to celebrate the centennial of Trussardi Group.

*Image above:
Courtesy of the artist; Hauser & Wirth; Luhring Augustine, New York.