The film "Ready Player One" directed by Steven Spielberg is not out yet, but it promises to be a great journey into the future by way of the past with hundreds of references to the '80s, a period of time in which we went through great changes in many disciplines, including fashion and technology. At the time Italian designer Cinzia Ruggeri reunited this duality with her avant-garde outfits, conceptual behavioural garments, and "transdisciplinary" pieces inspired by Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, and unusual collaborations (fans may remember how Brian Eno created a ziggurat shaped lightning installation for one of her shows, causing a sensation in Milan).
So, as the '80s seem to be pretty trendy at the moment, it doesn't come as a surprise that the Milan-based Federico Vavassori Gallery (Via Giorgio Giulini 5) is currently celebrating Ruggeri with "Umbratile con brio" (curated by Mariuccia Casadio and on until 10th March), the first exhibition after the retrospective "Cin Cin 1985 – 2015" that took place three years ago at 10 Corso Como. What may be surprising for some visitors who may not know Ruggeri's entire ouvre, is that the objects and designs collected here do not belong just to the fashion realm.
The "Homage to Lévi Strauss dress", with its three-dimensional ziggurat-like motifs now lives in the permanent collection of the Victorian & Albert Museum, so it is missing from the show, but the exhibition is conceived not as a retrospective with Ruggeri's best pieces, but as a voyage through her visions.
There are therefore other creatures to discover here, from the "abito salame" (salami dress) made with a thread similar to a cotton ham netting that would trap the body of the wearer as if it were a sausage, to an apron covered with natural sponges (that goes well with a steel chair covered in sponges, plastic gems and pearls...).
Some rooms are suspended between dream and reality, design and fashion, performance and installation: a dummy sits at a table inhabiting the "Abito Tovaglia" (tablecloth dress, 1984), a simple frock with an extension that could be used as a tablecloth offering the wearer a functional solution for an improptu lunch or dinner with friends.
On her back the "Shatzi" mirror invites visitors to play: this object is indeed not a sniggering enemy revealing wrinkles and other worrying signs of ageing, but a dear friend ready to offer with its multiple hands simple but fun gifts to the person standing in front of it.
Hands are actually a recurrent motifs in Ruggeri's imagination: they emerge from walls and paintings, inviting or scaring the viewers; they are evoked by black opera gloves calling to mind surrealist Schiaparelli and they are represented in a mosaic pattern on a bandeau bra, clutching the wearers' breasts.
Puzzling and blunt (see the ball of chicken skin floating in a glass case...), obsessively in love with her Schnauzer dog that appears everywhere, dangling on an earring or decorating a wall as a cut out made in simple black cardboard, Ruggeri nurtures a secret love for knick-knacks and random objects, that's why she designed a beaded ornament to dress a humble bulb or turned an ordinary coffee maker into a design object adding a seductive red veil and transforming its handle into a leg.
Literal interpretations of verbal expressions inspire Ruggeri funny moments like the "Colombra" (a sort of hybrid word fusing "colomba", Italian for "dove", and "ombra", meaning "shadow") and "Perle ai Porci" (Pearls to the Swines). The former is an elongated black velvet sofa, replicating the shadow that a human figure would cast on a wall, its crossed hands projecting a dove; the latter is a long pearl earring integrating a plastic pig among the pearls.
Explorations of geographies and boundaries also work pretty well in Ruggeri's universe: one table in the exhibition is shaped like the Greek Island of Miklos, while a map showing Torre dell'Ovo and Torre dell'Orso (in Puglia, where Ruggeri lived when she took a break from fashion and refocused on interior design) hangs on a wall surrounded by a broken frame that is allowing the plastic animals resting upon it to escape in a final act of surrealist freedom.
Far away from the brouhaha of the Milanese fashion week, "Umbratile con brio" offers an antidote to the madness of the world via the destabilising power of laughter. Miss it at your own peril.
All images in this post by Amin Zarif
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