SPAZIO / MAXXI duepercento competition
On the occasion of the MAXXI inauguration, and within the ambit of the exhibition SPACE, the winning entries from the international competition MAXXI 2per100 will also be unveiled.
The competition, announced in October 2008 by the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport together with the Ministry for Cultural Activities and Assets, applies Law no° 717 of 1949, known as “the 2% Law”, according to which State administrators and public bodies that order the construction of public buildings shall devote to the realization of works of art no less than 2% of the total expenditure foreseen for the project. The jury selected from among the 11 finalists, the two winning projects by Maurizio Mochetti for the museum atrium and Massimo Grimaldi for the external area.
Maurizio Mochetti — Rette di luce nell’iperspazio curvilineo, 2010
The project Maurizio Mochetti conceived for MAXXI reiterates a few constants that have been present in his work since his debut in the mid-1960s: the use of light, conceived as a physical constant and a manipulatable plastic element; the utilization of sophisticated technologies; the pursuit of an unconventional relationship with architectural space. For Mochetti, technical devices, whether intended to spectacularize or to camouflage, are essentially the tools that highlight currents or points of maximum concentration of energy, or the melding of material and space as part of a poetic that echoes elements of futurist theory and Lucio Fontana’s creative practices. Speed, force, tension, resistance, reflex, weight, elasticity and power are the terms Mochetti has used in his career to describe his idea of art as a physical and mental experience intended to change our perceptive profile and thus our comprehension of the world. His work for the museum calls for the permanent installation of four long red-painted ‘tubes’ hung with steel tie bars and containing within them a complex light-projection device that throws a band of red light onto the architecture, designing profiles that change depending on the light’s angle of incidence.
Massimo Grimaldi — Emergency’s Paediatric Centre in Port Sudan Supported by MAXXI, 2010
Grimaldi’s project utilizes the competition’s funding to construct a paediatric hospital managed by the association Emergency in Juba, Sudan. The artist will photograph or commission photography of the hospital’s construction as well as its daily activities upon completion. The images will be projected on one of the external walls of the museum in a continuous cycle. As in his other projects, which have raised large amounts of money for Emergency’s humanitarian efforts, Grimaldi poses questions that range from an institutional critique of the system of art to a deeper reflection on the principles of reality and function. In a process of subtraction, function becomes a concrete gesture with conceptual and ethical implications. In his project for the MAXXI, a new architectural entity (the museum) generates another (the hospital) through an artistic process that calls into question the functions and values on which the institution is based. In the words of the artist, “the success of a work becomes the historic failure of what it believed itself to be”.
SPAZIO / MAXXI duepercento competition
On the occasion of the MAXXI inauguration, and within the ambit of the exhibition SPACE, the winning entries from the international competition MAXXI 2per100 will also be unveiled.
The competition, announced in October 2008 by the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport together with the Ministry for Cultural Activities and Assets, applies Law no° 717 of 1949, known as “the 2% Law”, according to which State administrators and public bodies that order the construction of public buildings shall devote to the realization of works of art no less than 2% of the total expenditure foreseen for the project. The jury selected from among the 11 finalists, the two winning projects by Maurizio Mochetti for the museum atrium and Massimo Grimaldi for the external area.
Maurizio Mochetti — Rette di luce nell’iperspazio curvilineo, 2010
The project Maurizio Mochetti conceived for MAXXI reiterates a few constants that have been present in his work since his debut in the mid-1960s: the use of light, conceived as a physical constant and a manipulatable plastic element; the utilization of sophisticated technologies; the pursuit of an unconventional relationship with architectural space. For Mochetti, technical devices, whether intended to spectacularize or to camouflage, are essentially the tools that highlight currents or points of maximum concentration of energy, or the melding of material and space as part of a poetic that echoes elements of futurist theory and Lucio Fontana’s creative practices. Speed, force, tension, resistance, reflex, weight, elasticity and power are the terms Mochetti has used in his career to describe his idea of art as a physical and mental experience intended to change our perceptive profile and thus our comprehension of the world. His work for the museum calls for the permanent installation of four long red-painted ‘tubes’ hung with steel tie bars and containing within them a complex light-projection device that throws a band of red light onto the architecture, designing profiles that change depending on the light’s angle of incidence.
Massimo Grimaldi — Emergency’s Paediatric Centre in Port Sudan Supported by MAXXI, 2010
Grimaldi’s project utilizes the competition’s funding to construct a paediatric hospital managed by the association Emergency in Juba, Sudan. The artist will photograph or commission photography of the hospital’s construction as well as its daily activities upon completion. The images will be projected on one of the external walls of the museum in a continuous cycle. As in his other projects, which have raised large amounts of money for Emergency’s humanitarian efforts, Grimaldi poses questions that range from an institutional critique of the system of art to a deeper reflection on the principles of reality and function. In a process of subtraction, function becomes a concrete gesture with conceptual and ethical implications. In his project for the MAXXI, a new architectural entity (the museum) generates another (the hospital) through an artistic process that calls into question the functions and values on which the institution is based. In the words of the artist, “the success of a work becomes the historic failure of what it believed itself to be”.