Milano, the Recycling Beauty exhibition at the Prada Foundation

Milano, the Recycling Beauty exhibition at the Prada Foundation.

Fondazione Prada presents "Recycling Beauty" an exhibition curated by Salvatore Settis with Anna Anguissola and Denise La Monica, at the headquarters of Milano, from 17 November 2022 to 27 February 2023, press preview Wednesday 16 November 2022. “Recycling Beauty”, whose staged project was created by Rem Koolhaas/OMA, is an unprecedented survey entirely dedicated to the theme of the reuse of Greek and Roman antiquities in post-ancient contexts, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque.

The exhibition is part of a more extensive investigation Fondazione Prada has undertaken since 2015 when he simultaneously presented in the spaces of Milano e Venice "Serial Classic"and "Portable Classic“, two exhibitions curated by Salvatore Settis (With Anna Anguissola a Milano and with Davide Gasparotto in Venice) and designed by Rem Koolhaas/OMA. The premise of this research is the need to consider the classic not only as a legacy of the past, but as a vital element capable of impacting our present and future. Themes such as seriality, reuse and recycling in art are closely linked to our concept of modernity, but they also testify to the extraordinary persistence of some classic values, categories and models. Through an innovative interpretative approach and experimental exhibition methods, the ancient heritage, and in particular the Greco-Roman one, becomes, to use the words of settis, "a key to access the multiplicity of cultures of the contemporary world".

Despite its cultural relevance and widespread diffusion, the reuse of ancient materials has only recently been the focus of archaeological studies. Only in recent years has the essential fact of this phenomenon been studied in depth, namely the visual and conceptual relationship between the reused ancient elements and the post-ancient context, far from the original one, in which they were included. “Recycling Beauty“, on the contrary, intends to focus attention on the moment in which the ancient piece abandons its initial or ruined condition and is reactivated, acquiring new meaning and value thanks to the gesture of reuse. Each element of reuse not only modifies the context in which it is inserted, but is in turn modified by it in a mechanism of mutual legitimation and attribution of meaning. Exploring the fluid and multiple nature of art objects that change over time in use, reception and interpretation is equivalent to reflecting on the unstable and transformative nature of artistic processes.

The exhibition project, conceived by Rem Koolhaas/OMA with Giulio Margheri, develops in two buildings of the Foundation, the Podium and the Cisterna, as a path of historical analysis, discovery and imagination. Some parts of the project come from materials from previous exhibitions hosted at the Fondazione Prada and add a spatial dimension to the key theme of “Recycling Beauty“. The setup of Podium invites visitors to engage with the objects on display with different intensities. A landscape of low acrylic plinths allows the pieces on display to be perceived as a whole, while workstation-like structures encourage closer examination thanks to the presence of office chairs. In the Tank visitors encounter the objects gradually, in a sequence of spaces that facilitate observation from alternative points of view: from the height of a balcony, to the narrow perspective of a room built within one of the existing environments. Two rooms of the Cistern will be dedicated to the colossal statue of Constantine (4th century AD), one of the most iimportant features of late ancient Roman sculpture. Two monumental marble fragments, the left hand and foot, normally exhibited in ccourtyard of the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome, will be combined with a reconstruction of the colossus in 1:1 scale, never attempted before. This project is the result of a collaboration between the Capitoline Museums, Fondazione Prada and Factum Foundation, whose scientific supervision was followed by Claudio Parisi Presicce, Capitoline Superintendent of Cultural Heritage.

The exhibition itinerary hosts over fifty highly representative works of art from public collections and Italian and international museums such as Musée du Louvre in Paris, Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Capitoline Museums, Vatican Museums e Borghese Gallery in Rome, Uffizi Galleries in Florence e National Archaeological Museum of Naples. "Recycling Beauty” intends to highlight the great artistic and historical value of the works presented, but also to demonstrate how these are the product of migrations, transformations and evolutions of meaning. By highlighting the importance of fragments, reuse and interpretation, the exhibition contributes to considering the past as an unstable phenomenon in constant evolution.