While deconstruction is a widespread trend today (even in haute cuisine), the designer who has been experimenting with unstructured tailoring since the 1980s, now offers an exhibition based on an organic though multifaceted artistic itinerary. Indeed Giorgio Armani conceived it, creating a path which engages the visitors as if they were the center of a universe of images and highly structured sensations. You can feel it as you enter the Armani/Silos venue in the via Tortona fashion district in Milan, where Emotions of the Athletic Body is on display.
The exhibit, which celebrates those who compete in sports, is an aesthetic and moving complex of photos, sounds, still imagery and video installations. The designer personally curated it, selecting the photographs (since 1985 to the present) from a wealth of images he has commissioned over the years of sportsmen and sportswomen from different disciplines. His curatorship extends to the setting up design, with images printed on to giant slabs with a concrete finish, which echo the look of the building’s walls, while the typical running tracks red material is on the floors. As a virtual athletic journey, the show opens and ends in the atrium, with an iconic huge life-size model of an athlete balancing on a globe.
“Sports has always been one of my passions, for I believe it represents the qualities that improve us as people: dedication, sacrifice, perseverance and willpower. It is beneficial to the body and the spirit alike, as it shows that there is no success without dedication”, Giorgio Armani says.
Art, sports, fashion and sensations are elements of the Emotions of the Athletic Body, resulting from the interesting collaborations between the stylist and the photographers who documented the story of the maison as well as the sports people who have been involved in the Armani advertising campaigns, the Emporio Armani magazines and the books Athlete and Facce da Sport.
Next to a selection of previously unseen pictures by Kurt Markus and Weston Markus, works by Aldo Fallai, Howard Schatz, Mert Alas, Marcus Piggott, Serge Guerand, Cliff Watts, Eric Nehr, Vangelis Kyris, Tom Munro, Richard Phibbs and Antoine Passerat are also on display. Their works portray the harmonious bodies of champions like Serena Williams, David Beckham or the Olympic swimmer Filippo Magnini.
“This photographic exhibition aims to highlight sporting endeavor combined with aesthetic quality, a combination that has always been a part of my design vocabulary and an inspiration for my life philosophy. Through fashion I have shown my interpretation of the competitive spirit by dressing sportsmen and sportswomen for my advertising campaigns, choosing to work with both those who are among the world’s most renowned athletes, and those who are yet to achieve fame in the arena of sports”, Armani adds.
Armani’s aesthetics is “about simplicity, elegance, and comfort”, as the stylist says, which is quite important for sports people, who are not only role models but also fine subjects for photography, as they are at the peak of their physical condition. “I have always been fascinated by the values of sports and loved its rituals; in fact, since ancient times sports has been a byword for top physical prowess and spectacular athletic performance”.
Take also a glimpse of the Armani/Silos building, the exhibition space which houses a permanent collection of Armani’s work “since the earliest designs to the most recent ones”, as he explains. It opened in 2015 for the 40th anniversary of the company, which the Italian designer founded – thanks to Sergio Galeotti advice – after work experiences as a buyer for La Rinascente and designer for Cerruti. He also used to be assistant photographer, maybe an additional plus in a world where the knowledge of the interactions between images and communication is a must. With Emotions of the Athletic Body, Giorgio Armani is lending his support to the Special Olympics, the international sports organization for people with intellectual disabilities.
Paola Sammartano
Emotions of the Athletic Body
Until 27th November 2016
Armani/Silos
Via Bergognone 40
20144 Milano
Italy
