On the occasion of Milan Expo 2015, the Italian Institute of Culture presents, in collaboration with the Today Art Museum, “EXPLORING MILAN”, a journey through Milan and its surroundings, a thorough glance to highlight the thousands shades of a metropolis.
A web of stratified mazes makes up any big city and its hinterland. To unravel its intricacies and narrate their stories, we need tracks to follow and keys for interpretation. The city of Milan gave me some leads to four different groups of images: Milan the Ephemeral; Milan the Laborious; Milan the Secretive; Milan ancient roots.
The contemporary spirit of the Expo, programmatically ephemeral, is portrayed through cold images printed on industrial paper and put on aluminum plates.
The other sections show layers of the past, sometimes recent but always long-lasting. These works are printed on sensitized watercolor paper, to accentuate the poetic aspect in them. Some also contain traces of pencil drawings and hand-coloring.
Milan the Laborious looks at the factories and the waterways, to the old buildings and to the modern re-inventions of the structures that wrote the destiny of Milan as a hub of production and the economic capital of Europe.
We then penetrate into an array of discreet and secluded places, reflecting the personality of the denizens of Milan, their concreteness, their reluctance towards ostentation, and their tendency to hide shy treasures.
The deepest investigation regards the ancient origins, read as shreds of visual poetry, the growing soil and origin of everything. (Roberto Goffi)
