Exhibition Details

The exhibition retraces Paolo Scheggi’s artistic research between the 1960s and ’70s through a selection of more than 25 works. For this occasion, the iconic immersive installation Interfiore, presented for the first time by Galleria La Tartaruga in 1968, is displayed again.
Sixty years after two works by Paolo Scheggi (Intersuperfici) joined the collection of Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, directed by Palma Bucarelli at the time, and after the artist participates in the show Monocroma in Bologna and Florence, this exhibition aims to analyse his oeuvre from the Sixties to the Seventies of the last century, celebrating in particular 1963, considered the year in which Paolo Scheggi reached international recognition. Making Spaces is the title of the exhibition displayed by Cardi Gallery in Milan in collaboration with Associazione Paolo Scheggi. From January 26 to April 15, 2023, Cardi Gallery presents a selection of more than 25 works by Paolo Scheggi.
The exhibition path, curated by Ilaria Bignotti, heads in two directions, intending to look into the integration of design and architecture elaborated in the spatial modules on which the most famous works by the artist are based, and to offer the public a broad view of Paolo Scheggi’s approach towards the concepts of interaction, interspace, and multimedia.
The exhibition was designed as a conversation between Intersuperfici, Inter-ena-cubi – works created with modules of die-cut cardboard and plexiglass, or with modules of enamelled metal - architectural spaces and projects about the interaction between plastic and architecture - that are related to an interesting production process implemented by Scheggi between 1962 and 1971 thanks to his relations with Bruno Munari, Nizzoli Associati, Mario Brunati, and the collaborations with magazines such as Casabella, Domus and In - letters and design sketches, drawings and maquettes, which constitute the theoretical part of his works. For this occasion, the iconic immersive installation Interfiore (1968), consisting of 85 fluorescent wooden rings hanging in the dark and illuminated by Wood’s light, is displayed again.
“Fontana wrote about his appreciation for those paintings that were so black, white, red, in a letter that predicted the intense and brilliant career that Scheggi would have achieved - stated the curator Ilaria Bignotti; a career which was confirmed again in 1963 with his first participation in an exhibition abroad: it was in Bruxelles, at the iconic Galerie Smith when his Intersuperfici entered the international art scene. This is more than enough to understand the scientific significance of the exhibition that Cardi Gallery is hosting in Milan, which is an important city for the career of the artist born in Florence: in Milan, Scheggi found an open laboratory where he experienced several artistic languages and media during a decade, going beyond all limits”.
The exhibition also covers the importance of many critics, designers and manufacturers that worked with Scheggi, such as Germano Celant, Angelo Fronzoni, Alessandro Mendini, Gian Mario Oliveri, Giancarlo Sangregorio, and with whom the artist signed the 1965 typewritten book Ipotesi di Lavoro per la progettazione totale, presented in Milan at the Collegio Regionale Lombardo Degli Architetti; the exhibition also deals with Scheggi’s collaboration with Fabbrica Poggi on the production of “visual-plastic” objects for design purposes and with his role as visual advisor for relevant urban architectural planning contests between 1966 and 1969.
This exhibition takes place in a very vibrant time for what concerns the studies on Scheggi’s work, in which the concepts of interaction and interchange between space, gaze and the time of perception and experience are placed at the centre of an international conversation, as proved by the 2022 acquisition of a red enamelled Inter-ena-cubo by London’s Tate Modern, that is being shown at Shangai’s (China) MAP Museum of Art od Pudong in the exhibition The Dynamic Eye: Op and Kinetic Art from Tate Collection. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue by Silvana Editore.