In 2014, Sice Previt had the honour of curating a small exhibition dedicated to Gio Ponti at Malpensa Airport, in the so-called ‘Porta di Milano’, an original exhibition space created in an access area to the terminal and set up with temporary exhibitions, which serves as an introduction to the city and its cultural identity.
The one on the Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti (1891-1979) was, to be precise, the third exhibition hosted by Porta di Milano, after those dedicated to the artists Fausto Melotti and Marino Marini. Curated by Salvatore Licitra with the collaboration of Gio Ponti Archives, ‘Mysterious Objects’ united three distinct works by the master in a single, original display that amplified their enigmatic character while enhancing their resonant aesthetic qualities.
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At the centre of the display stood the ‘Los Angeles Cathedral’ (1967), a sculpture created as a tribute to the city, as a model of an imaginary cathedral of its own. It is made of only three sheets of stainless steel, modelled and combined to compose a figure of an angel, which, however, also recalls the famous ‘pierced’ churches designed by Gio Ponti (among the best known are the co-cathedral in Taranto and the church of San Francesco al Fopponino in Milan). On the sides, on the other hand, were the enigmatic white obelisks with which Gio Ponti set up the ‘Sala Espressioni’ in the Ideal Standard showroom in Milan in 1966 – a space he had designed himself, the year before, to host temporary installations by artists and designers, according to a brilliant idea of the company that brought art and industry into dialogue through the device of the exhibition. Finally, the colourful ‘Flooring for the Salzburger Nachrichten in Salzburg’ designed by Gio Ponti in 1976 completed the layout designed for the Porta di Milano: a sort of tangram composed of large polygonal ceramic slabs of different shapes and bright colours, assembled to cover the floor with a dynamic and decidedly surprising effect.
In the words of the curator, Mysterious Objects combined “three special points [of Gio Ponti’s work], which seem to unite different themes by prefiguring a future path centered on the theme of metamorphosis: a floor that can be a painting, an angel that can also be a church, and many obelisks that contradict their traditional, solitary monumentality.” A theme in happy assonance with the particular character of the Milan Gate, a place of passage that naturally refers to the metamorphoses often implied by travel.
Sice Previt made a significant contribution to the realization of the exhibition by taking care of the technical part of the set-up: from the production of the black painted wooden platforms, intended to house the various works by enclosing them as if on a stage, to the transportation of the original works and their placement in the exhibition. In addition, Sice Previt workshops, by virtue of their expertise in steel working, provided the restoration of the sheets that make up the “Los Angeles Cathedral.”
Participating in an initiative far removed from the commercial world was again an honor for Sice Previt, which often and willingly makes its know-how in the field of furniture and restoration available to support the enhancement of cultural heritage related to architecture, design and, more generally, art-whether public or private and thus, often, not very accessible.
