Concept
The exhibition curated by Andrea Ciotti is a glimpse into the workshop of the Italian-Swiss architect, designer and professor in his later years. Blumer presents a series of objects and writings made by him that represent his complex activity across disciplines. The objects, which he calls “luminous,” construct installations that in different ways showcase his ability to build on the themes of structure, optics and geometry. “Souls” utter sentences legible on the back of their glass container thanks to the absence of refraction of light between the liquid and the contained glass figurines, “Dancers” twirl twisting colors in figures of wood and aluminum thanks to the geometry of the beloved hyperbolic paraboloid, and “Nomadic Shells” printed in relief on transparent sheets are traces of the beautiful summer beaches and the inventing mollusks that built them before abandoning them, illuminated now by a candle. At the same time, the exhibition displays the production of the first four “Quaderni di Riccardo Blumer” published by Corraini, a new series by the important art and design publisher that has accustomed us to its high-quality productions for many years. In the first Notebooks (Dancers, Matrix, Via Spiga, Ecliptic), Blumer traces the red threads between teaching, architecture, study, travel and design. His works made with the students of the USI Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (a recent exercise is also on display), alternate with installations, architectures, objects and stories as if to bring order to these continuous bounces between different disciplines that since the days of the Compasso d’Oro at Laleggera Blumer has accustomed us to distracting us from what we thought were defined paths. We recall with pleasure the lectures at “Blumerandfriends” that in times of great professional ferment for the author amazed so many audiences made to preserve and train in the same profession the extreme need for knowledge as a gymnasium to creativity. Since then Blumer has devoted himself more and more to teaching at the University of Mendrisio, participating in the Venice and Seoul Architecture Biennale, among others. Perhaps frightened by the recent impoverishment of research in design companies these exhibits, made in his former Oratory in Casciago near Varese, call us back to the desire for constructive wonder expressed in small semi-industrial “series” that have the strength to reopen for us, too, themes at “Blumerandfriends.” Themes of which we, too old or too preoccupied to still be students, have no opportunity to train. The passion that the author shows through his creativity allows us to believe and trust in a world of love for pure research even for those fields of design that we mistakenly believe to be exclusively productive.
Accompanying the exhibition and the Quaderni Corraini are notes and texts by A. Meda, M. Botta, A. Colonetti, A. Rui, L. Galimberti, A. Ciotti, M. Barbierato, F. Oswald, M. Pirola, R. Stauffacher, V. Sieni, C. Broggi, T. Arnaboldi, P. Mazzo, B. Gervasoni and A. Stocchi.
