The setting
project by Marco Palmieri
The exhibition design for ED RUSCHA MIXMASTER show attempts to combine all the works by the
American artist with the ones chosen from Turin collections, creating a unified and compact space, able to
convey the curatorial idea of a possible ideal collection.
The exhibition space is developed along a simple orthogonal grid defining the three main sections, constant
obsessions in the artist's own research: Radio, Cinema, Movie, Cars, Animals and Fruit, Anatomy, Criminals,
Gasoline Stations, Mountains.
Each section features both works by Ed Ruscha and works from the different Museums in Turin, presented
alongside as equals, so as to compare them in an ongoing dialogue.
The passages and cuts of the sections are placed in way that both articulates the visitor's itinerary and
emphasises the significant connections between the exhibition key topics and between the works
showcased.
The stands, bases, and supports are extremely simplified: niches drawn back into the wall, box-shaped
platforms with thick surfaces, large glass showcases, in order to make works the focus of the visitor's
attention.
The colour chosen for all the elements in the display, from the walls to the stands is a very soft yellow turning
into grey, a tone recalling the subsidiary elements of packaging: paper tape, wrapping paper.
We have tried to weave into one pattern not only the artist's drawings, photographs and paintings with the
objects from local collections, but also the solids and voids in the exhibiting space.
Therefore an exhibition itinerary similar to a labyrinth open to multiple ways of exploration comes into shape,
where the visitor is free to observe the affinities between the different works on display.
Marco Palmieri