“Tre Capolavori a Vicenza”
When I returned to Italy for the holidays, I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the beautiful setting of the Palladian Basilica in Vicenza, which hosted the exhibition “Tre Capolavori a Vicenza”, litterally “Three Masterpieces in Vicenza.”
What particularly intrigued me about this exhibition was the fact that it consisted of only three works. It was truly a pleasant surprise to find myself immersed in a space that contained three works from different eras, all representing the same theme, yet so harmoniously interconnected.
In the main hall of the Basilica, known as the “Salone Superiore” dimly lit, with the artworks almost shrouded in darkness, were, on one side, in pairs, the works “The Four Ages of Man” by Antoon Van Dyck (1621–27) and “Saint Jerome” by Caravaggio (1606):
On the other side of the room, there was a contemporary work by David Sassolino, a local artist from Vicenza, specially created for the exhibition: “No Memory without Loss”:
Knowledge and growth intertwine infinitely in the passage of time, an incessant circular motion in which the phases of every human being’s life alternate. This is the invisible suggestion that runs through the exhibition event.
The care of the spaces, the study of the placement of the artworks, the lighting of the context, allowed me to immerse myself perfectly in this suggestion.
I chose this exhibition because, despite its apparent limitation in terms of the number of artworks present, it evoked a range of emotions in me that I haven’t experienced on many other occasions within museums or exhibitions.
I have always been fascinated by the works of ancient masters, such as Caravaggio and Van Dyck, as in this case. However, what particularly moved me was the comparison. The intergenerational comparison, the comparison of artists who, 400 years apart, tackle the same theme. It conveyed a unique emotion to me because, with one work specifically created for the exhibition, realizing that the artist had at that moment engaged in confronting with the theme of the inexorable passage of time, its circularity, knowledge, and growth, inevitably led me to confront it myself. All these emotions were amplified by the context. The room, enormous, was left almost empty, with the works on either side of it. And it was dark. After 5 minutes, I had already seen the three works, and I found myself in this limbo, in the middle of the room, in the dark, confronting myself.
Suddenly, then, someone began to interact with Sassolino’s contemporary work. At that moment, I realized that the work was not static, definitive, but rather I was explained that the work continuously changed. The artwork consisted of a rotating disk covered with a large quantity of high viscosity industrial oil paint in constant movement and falling. The rotation of the disk slowly but inexorably caused this paint to fall to the ground. Every six hours, the fallen paint was collected with a spatula and repositioned on the disk, which reversed the direction of its rotation.
I believe it is important to understand the artist’s idea behind a work of art, but at the same time, it is important to interpret the work based on one’s own sensibility. The feeling generated by the sight of the paint recovery was certainly influenced by the title of the work and therefore by the message the artist wanted to pass, but I then experienced it as a totally personal experience. Loss is inevitable. We certainly lose parts of ourselves, and these parts can be human relationships, places, habits. Our life is a continuous change. But everything we lose, nevertheless, is never completely “lost,” but remains within us. It shapes our soul, shapes ourselves, our way of living and seeing the world. And all the experiences we have had, all the people we have met, mix with each other and create our person.
Rethinking this exhibition in connection with design thinking has allowed me to notice many things in common. Firstly, as previously described, there’s the study of the context within which the viewer observes these artworks. The study of spaces, light, and the overall atmosphere are all elements that allow placing the viewers at the center of the exhibition (peculiarity of design thinking), focusing on their sensibility, weaknesses, and way of being.
And all of this is inevitably connected to the way the exhibition is conceived by its curators. Just as in the Design Thinking process, it starts with the idea of empathizing with the visitor. This is accentuated by the fact that the main artwork is conceived and created specifically for the exhibition itself.
But what made me think most about the human-centric process of design thinking was Sassolino’s artwork, where, once again, the protagonist is not the artwork itself, which alone is nothing, but its interaction with the human being. The connection it creates and the stimuli it gives to the observer, to the one who looks at it.
At the end, I think that the design of an art exhibition is a field in which design thinking could be greatly implemented. But more than that, using design thinking from the beginning of the ideation process of an artwork could be very interesting, and could lead to taking into consideration the understanding of the emotions of the observer in the process.
