Exhibition

"Pompei Today. The End of Capitalism." - Patrizia Pfenninger

18 May 2019 – 23 Jun 2019

Regular hours

Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00
Thursday
10:00 – 18:00
Friday
10:00 – 18:00

Save Event: "Pompei Today. The End of Capitalism." - Patrizia Pfenninger

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Galleria Ramo

Como
Lombardy, Italy

Event map

Is the end of capitalism not due, as Marx theorised, to a sort of implosion of the capitalist system itself?

About

The imagined scenario which is created in the spaces of the Galleria Ramo by Patrizia Pfenninger, in her first solo exhibition, questions the hypothetical reception, interpretation and classification of everyday objects of our time, from another, extraterrestrial life form. The exhibition in Como is thus transformed into a sort of spaceship/archaeological museum of the future in which the only survivors, petrified (hence the analogy with Pompeii) follows a mysterious, fleeting and infallible alien intervention, gathering the goods of consumption. Symbolic objects easily and deliberately recognisable to today's consumer, increasingly considered (illusory) "useful and indispensable" but which, in a short time, inevitably become "the waste of tomorrow” (Zygmunt Bauman, Vite di scarto, 2005).Symbols of apparent progress that leads to even greater and unreasonable production of new things, capable of triggering a feeling in man, a voracious, greedy, bulimic desire for consumption. Consumer goods of the current society, defined as liquid both for its debauchery and for the constant and sudden change to which it is subjected, the rise to simulacra idolised by the masses. Wax idols (like a pair of Icarus's wings) built on images and advertising, creating, on the whole, a visual communication implemented through targeted marketing strategies there is even talk of neuromarketing that works at an unconscious level and is able to leverage the decision-making capacity of consumers, today find their apex in branded products, where the brand has become (not always rightly) synonymous with quality and excellence. And these products, now an integral part of the everyday life, help to describe, to denote and at the same time to characterise our identity.

Based on these considerations, the project by Patrizia Pfenninger Pompei today. The end of capitalism is born. Hypothesis of a future archeology where the simulacra of consumption are transformed into finds, products stripped of their appeal and reduced to objects in their essence (mindful of "a rose is a rose is a rose"), testimony to a past (our present) marked by economic and market logic with questionable and controversial effects. Without entering into an explicit criticism of the system of values ​​of the contemporary world, the exhibition invites the viewer to reflect, to dwell on its relationship with the material goods with which it interacts daily and on the choices that it is so frequently called to put into practice. Quoting the artist "we are our supermarket (of choices) / we are our own meat / we are our own butcher". Pompei today is, therefore, the exhibition of an imaginary and imagined exhibition that has not yet taken place, a sort of document/testimony of contemporary life and of the search (perhaps vain) of the human being for happiness without expiration date.

Patrizia Pfenninger was born in Zurich in 1984. Her passion is communication: her studies and professional activities have always been oriented towards creativity. She has a CSIA diploma in applied arts, at Supsi in Lugano she obtained a degree as a visual communicator and a Master in Interaction Design, as well as diplomas in IdeaMapping and Marketing. These different technical sensitivities allow her to combine, with her independent agency indica, the rigour of the sciences with the ability to create new worlds in artistic expression and design, working on multimedia structures and traditional works. The passion for typography has led her to conceive artefacts in which matter becomes text. IDEA, the sculpture realized with 100 banknotes of 100 EURO as movable characters, has become the symbol of the #leideesipagano campaign. The work, which defends the culture of the project, was presented in April 2016 at the Maxxi Media Art Festival in Rome, and then exhibited in Turin (Circolo del Design), Genoa (Palazzo Ducale), Milan (Chamber of Commerce), Salerno and Lugano.

CuratorsToggle

Diego Stephani

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Patriza Pfenninger

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