DAM’s Dynamite
The Directed Art Modern explodes at Scope & Ligne Roset Design District during Miami Art Week
Plastic bags to many symbolize the mundane — perhaps an evening meal of leftovers – but to artist Stefano Ogliari Badessi, they represent a material ripe for transformation. In his latest work to be exhibited at Scope during Miami Art Week, Ogliari Badessi develops a dream world within an inflatable object with tangible elements of the installation made up of different materials including paper, textiles and polystyrene sculptures.
Badessi, who considers himself a nomadic installation artist, has in conjunction with his ongoing study of everyday items adapted his work to be mobile — easy to transport to even the most remote locations on earth. His installations have been displayed in Switzerland, at an array of exhibits in Italy and he has completed a residence in China — where he was selected by Francois-Henri Pinault to become a guest artist at Shanghai’s Swatch Art Peace Hotel. In May 2019, he will exhibit Wonderland in Crema, Italy, where he will be installing hundreds of works throughout the city.
“I can go anywhere” he says, “Make art anywhere and with any material. I can simultaneously fuel my imagination with experiences and create new designs related to what I find.”
His current installation is included in Le Voyage Extraordinaire, an exhibition at SCOPE comprised of artists represented by the Miami-based The Directed Art Modern. DAM’s focus is to simplify the art world and to be a service to and for artists in all levels of their careers. To keep art for art’s sake – so that the artist can focus on conceiving, imagining and designing their materials. The DAM explores not only traditional modes of exhibition, but also innovative locations as well.
To that point, DAM curator Valeray Franciso has for Miami Art Week orchestrated an interactive art exhibit at the Ligne Roset showroom in the Design District. Transformation is comprised of five vintage advertisements from Ligne Roset’s storied history, each serving as a starting point from which a colored line will emerge and soon connects to an artist’s work. One will be by Bego M. Santiago, a Galician visual artist based in Berlin who will be presenting LITTLE BOXES, a Kinect-driven video projection mapping art installation where tiny people projected onto wooden boxes are terrified of nearby human presence. Bego Santiago Little Boxes installation A project by Bego M. Santiago included in Transformation: An Interactive Art Exhibit at Ligne Roset Design District The goal
of all the works in Transformation is to display the relationship between art and design. The progressive installations will incorporate digital mapping and algorithms, motion detection and video, sculpture and drawings and experimentation in materials from concrete to aluminum to textiles.
“Ligne Roset’s non-conformist designs have always shared a common thread with contemporary art,” says the French manufacturer. “And for Art Basel, Design Miami, [we} are proud to support and promote creativity and original ideas in many forms. Patrons who visit the exhibit will experience the transformative process from past to present and from one medium and point of view to the next as they journey through different decades and designs in the Ligne Roset showroom. Francisco selected each component to be energetic and immersive, to take away any distance between art and people, who will be encouraged to sit, engage, even photograph the artwork as they exist among it.”
