Milano: “Stefano Chiassai. Beyond the lockdown Drawings, fabrics, colors” the designer's exhibition at the ADI Design Museum – Compasso d'Oro

Milano: “Stefano Chiassai. Beyond the lockdown Drawings, fabrics, colors” the designer's exhibition at the ADI Design Museum – Compasso d'Oro.

All 'ADI Design Museum – Compasso d'Oro, the fashion designer's works with bright lines and colors are on display Stefano Chiassai in the multidisciplinary exhibition “Stefano Chiassai. Beyond the lockdown. Designs, fabrics, colors” edited by Paola Maddaluno. A gallery of thoughts and fragments of daily life tells, with different languages, some of the most significant moments of the pandemic, a private notebook full of characters, emotions and desire for freedom, guardian of relationships and momentum towards rebirth.

The exhibition, available until 4 April 2023, presents a first section composed of numerous marker drawings made during the lockdown days. Invented characters, talking animals, elves and floating objects are just some of the subjects that Chiassai uses to comment on everyday events; through the inexhaustible energy of imagination, the artist changes worry into an opportunity to lose oneself in boundless beauty.
In the second part of the exhibition, the world of figures, bodies and words collected on paper mixes with the creative plurality of fashion design and is transformed into an unprecedented immersive installation. Located in a large room that offers a large wall covered with a fabric designed specifically for the exhibition and presented for the first time, the work is made up of 17 tapestries made on a Jacquard loom, clothes and original design elements, such as seats, tables, which reflect the motif of the fabric reproduced on different materials. All these elements become the emblem of a mechanism that has converted negativity into a future-oriented path aimed at a common restart to reach new goals.

Exactly three years after the first drawing, the works exhibited in chronological order are a testimony to the feelings and fears that have involved the whole world; starting from “Words in the Dark. Bla, Bla Bla, let's open our mouths to talk about positive things." dated 8 March 2020, Chiassai narrates with crowded images, full of details and symbols, a daily life made up of contradictions, words, testimonies and expectations. “Prisoners in the house. Our Hearts will defeat the Monster” recounts the weeks of isolation with a whirlwind of hearts, viruses, closed doors and eyes, “Back to the open doors. With Discipline, Hope, but also many unknowns" it brings the first days of reopening to life through words such as future, work, hope and images of shops and people. The journey through the drawings ends with the work of 31 December 2020 in which the old year, negative and black, clashes with the brightness and colors of the new year, wishing for a return to full normality and a rebirth.

Several exhibited works are collected in the volume “Diary of a lockdown. 8 March 2020 – 31 August 2021” published by Silvana Editoriale in 2021 as well as being included in the exhibition and editorial project "Italian Air" curated by Gianfranco Maraniello, Alberto Salvadori and Vincenzo Trione, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and created with the collaboration of the ICA Foundation Milano in 2021.

Stefano Chiassai trained at the art institute of Florence. In 1980 he created his brand “Stefano Chiassai” and a few years later, in 1985, together with his wife Alessandra, he founded “SCS Studio Chiassai”. In 1987 his idea of ​​fashion represented Italian style at the Barcelona Youth Biennial; from 1988 to 2000 he taught "Menswear Fashion Design" at Polimoda in Florence. In 1994 he closed his brand and concentrated on style and trend consultancy for numerous luxury brands. In particular, since 2009, thanks also to the support of his team, he has become the designer of the "Fendi Uomo" clothing line. Over time, the Tuscan artist collects 20.000 vintage items, kept today in the “TheCube Archive” space: a meeting place between stylists, artists, musicians, students and creatives eager to dialogue. Several volumes have been published: in 2016 Caosordinato and in 2018 Ritmoemotivo both published by Nuova Libra; in 2020 Bluetailoring and in 2021 Diary of a lockdown. 8 March 2020 – 31 August 2021 published by Silvana Editoriale.

ADI Design Museum is the place dedicated to the Compasso d'Oro collection, a dynamic museum dedicated not only to creativity and design culture but also to interaction with the city of Milano and the international panorama. ADI Design Museum is a place for narrating and valorising the Italian design system, a container open to exchange, capable of speaking to the numerous design community and, thanks to its informative approach, also to non-experts in the sector. The aim of ADI - Association for Industrial Design is to build an inclusive reality, capable of offering an engaging but above all in progress visiting experience, thanks to the continuous updating of the pieces of the Compasso d'Oro Collection. ADI represents a cultural center characterized by contemporaneity and research, capable of going beyond the traditional confines of museums and opening up to the complexity of a globalized reality by establishing contacts between the world of design and that of fashion, architecture, science, technology and creativity in general, but also of the production system.