MATTEO PELLEGRINO
Duty Free, 2019
Table
Polyurethane foam, wood, epoxy resin, realized in collaboration with Gobbetto Company
75 H x 120 x 200 cm ca
Unique piece
2019
Italy
Photo credit/Federico Floriani
“Too often the word and the concept of border are abused, creating confusion and an exaggerated run-up to define everything that is different from criminalizing it and making it automatically an enemy. I always thought it was nice that everyday objects could talk to us, and maybe inspire our ideas and consciences, a bit like a warning for the future so that mistakes from the past would not be replicated.
“Boundaries” comes from this reflection and intends to do just that, showing in a visual way as not from the delimitation but rather from the contamination and the “mixture” of cultures generates beauty and potentially enrichment of the parties involved.
In this case a table has been created that is fragmentation from the USA and Chinese flag, which crumbled and amalgamated, creating a fusion of colors that makes them indistinguishable in a new “unique”.
Screens were also created with a boundary network - the same used for a large part of borders and fences for human beings and not. Here, too, the colors of the European, English, French, Italian and Dutch flags were merged as well as the Libyan and Moroccan ones. Contamination, if perpetuated with system and organization, is the greatest form of beauty and prosperity, great countries and great peoples of the past have been formed in this way and even today the echo of their technical, artistic, humanistic, aesthetic and legal advances constitute the basis of our civilization.
At the end of the installation, resin carpets have been created that reflect the design of galaxies and photos made by space telescopes. Needless to emphasize how the concept of boundary is limited and limiting in that context, and how small and petty border issues are minuscule compared.
Living knowing your boundaries but constantly trying to overcome them is an exercise that should be everyone’s patrimony, and you should be careful when you lose the key to your visions because you could remain prisoners.” Matteo Pellegrino
