La Collectionneuse

​With: Alvar Aalto, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Etel Adnan, Vincenzo Agnetti, Mirella Bentivoglio, Luca Bertolo, Max Bill, Lina Bo Bardi, Anna Boghiguian, Vlasēs Kaniarēs, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Vaginal Davis, Paolo De Poli, Mirtha Dermisache, Tarsila do Amaral, Thea Djordjadze, Aref El Rayess, Chung Eun-Mo, Barbara Hammer, Tamara Henderson, Bruno Jakob, Fernand Léger, Jochen Lempert, Leoncillo, Mathieu Mategot, Tony Matelli, Sadamasa Motonaga, Bruno Munari, I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, Milena Muzquiz, Ron Nagle, Yoichi Ohira, Erik Olovsson/Studio E.O, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Giulio Paolini, Gio Ponti, Peter Regli, Lin May Saeed, Andrea Sala, Gino Sarfatti, Martin Soto Climent, Ettore Sottsass, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Mario Ticcò, Alvaro Urbano, Cecilia Vicuña, Alfredo Volpi, Andro Wekua, Franz West, Tapio Wirkkala, Liuba Wolf, Ruth-Wolf Rehfeldt

Curated by Luca Lo Pinto.

Scenography: Maria Magdalena David, Leah Friedman, Illona Rougemond-Mosconi.

La Collectionneuse is an exhibition born from an invitation to create a project based on Silvia Fiorucci’s collection. Its sole theme is the concept of a collection as a portrait of a person. While drawing from a selection of works chosen by Silvia Fiorucci, La Collectionneuse aims to evoke the figure of an imaginary collector. Unlike public institutions, private collections reflect the tastes and interests of a single person, though collectors often aspire to share them, ultimately returning them to the community. The criteria that shape these collections can be incredibly varied—formal, conceptual, or deeply personal. As Goethe famously said, “Collectors are happy people.” The exhibition is conceived as a composition, a mise-en-scène designed to transform Le Quai’s space into a domestic setting in which design objects, paintings, sculptures, drawings, and carpets are freely juxtaposed to evoke the wunderkammer – cabinet of curiosities – of the collector. The walls of the entire exhibition space have been covered with long strips of plain fabric, reminiscent of theatrical backdrops, against which the artworks are displayed in a style echoing 19th-century salons, in stark contrast to the white cube approach. The exhibition is intended to be experienced as a single, large-scale installation, a Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art—where any attempt at categorization and definition is deliberately avoided, creating an intentionally elusive exhibition experience. Background music, exhibition invitations scattered in a basket, and various accessories all appear as both scenic and narrative props, inviting each visitor to imagine their own version of this imaginary collector, complete with her tastes and obsessions. The deliberately dense arrangement of the artworks is intended to evoke a collector’s home, a salon, and an artist’s atelier all at once.

Every private collection is an autobiography, the fruit of contingencies, encounters, and whims, unbound by any canon, including historical or institutional. This is the essence of this exhibition: a small world, a kaleidoscope of seemingly disparate styles, languages, and explorations that nonetheless resonate with one another. Among these, we find experimentation with ceramics (Ron Nagle, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess), glass (Tapio Wirkkala, Mario Ticcò, Yoichi Ohira), language (Vincenzo Agnetti, Mirella Bentivoglio, Mirtha Dermisache, Ruth-Wolf Rehfeldt), design and architecture (Alvar Aalto, Max Bill, Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass, Gino Sarfatti, Lina Bo Bardi), alongside small expressions of affection (Alexander Calder, Leoncillo Leonardi, Fausto Melotti, Bruno Munari), exquisite interior objects (Fernand Léger’s carpet, Franz West’s chair), works by more unorthodox figures (Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Vaginal Davis, Barbara Hammer), and echoes of cultures both near and far (Anna Boghiguian, Vlassis Caniaris, Tarsila do Amaral, I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih, Cecilia Vicuña, Alfredo Volpi).

The exhibition, conceived as a collection, becomes a storytelling device. As Susan Stewart writes, “The collection is a form of art as play, a form involving the reframing of objects within a world of attention and manipulation of context. Like other forms of art, its function is not the restoration of context of origin but rather the creation of a new context.” [Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 151–152.]