Surface Matters

A Photographic Collection on Ceramics
Curated by Sarah Cosulich at MUT

On 24 September, MUT inaugurates Surface Matters, a special project dedicated to photography which for the first time interacts with the ceramic surfaces of a specifically-designed exhibition display inside the Mutina building. 

Important photographic works selected from the collection of Massimo Orsini and presented on ceramic wall modules, challenge surface, the gaze and their own narrative content. Not just an exhibition, but an unexpected path of images, an innovative stratified setting in close dialogue with the architecture of the space.

40 photographs by 26 artists, from Man Ray to Richard Prince, by way of Robert Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Luigi Ghirri, but also Wolfgang Tillmans, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Demand, Louise Lawler, and Zoe Leonard. 

Analog or digital, formal, conceptual, performative, quotidian, mental, the works on view narrate the image as a personal and universal portrait of the world, only apparently surface of the profound action of the gaze. Photography as language or necessity, as universe, history, mirror, reflex or reflection.

Surface Matters challenges the tradition of display, gives new form to the exhibition space and is shaped by it. With this novel installation that breaks away from the typical raditional neutral environment of art presentation, Mutina chooses unveil its history and research on ceramics, triggering a relationship with the power of the images by some of the most outstanding protagonists of contemporary art. 

Subject, foreground and background intertwine to generate new layers, different possible narratives. Flatness or tridimensional effects, illusions and plays on surface emerge amidst the architectural lines of the ceramic settings, inhabitable spaces that are simply suggested, but capable of representing a new frame 

Robert Adams, Matthew Barney, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Francesco Gennari, Luigi Ghirri, Robert Gober, Peter Hujar, Luisa Lambri, Louise Lawler, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Sharon Lockhart, Man Ray, Robert Mappelthorpe, Irving Penn, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon,  Wolfgang Tillmans, Franco Vimercati, Christopher Williams, Francesca Woodman

About Mutina for Art
Mutina for Art is an ambitious and varied project that includes MUT, a dedicated exhibition space within the company headquarters, This is Not a Prize, an important prize awarded annually, and Dialogue, a series of collaborations with artists, galleries and partners coming from various creative and with international art institutions. Sensitivity to form, desire for innovation and willingness to incorporate the
most diverse visual stimulation in today’s world have been part of the Mutina mission since its inception, and now take the form of a new a program with contemporary art at its core. The appointment of the curator Sarah Cosulich in Mutina coincides with the aim of the company to make its commitment to contemporary art structured and articulated in order to make it a source of influence, experience, and above all a territory of exchange. 

About Mutina
Mutina is a new way of looking at ceramics no longer as a simple cladding, but as an interior design project. Mutina is a project auteur that combines technology, the handmade and experimentation to overcome the limits of matter and through essential research produces
a high quality product. Together with designers such as Patricia Urquiola, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, Rodolfo Dordoni, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Tokujin Yoshioka, Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay di Raw Edges, Inga Sempè, Konstantin Grcic and Hella Jongerius, Mutina dresses the architecture like a second skin. 

*RSVP to Bianca Bertolissi: press [​at​] mutina.it or T +39 328 6818414

Press Contact 
Bianca Bertolissi

T +39 328 6818414, press [​at​] mutina.it
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