Artwork from Laboratorio Fornace77 by Alessia Dionisi with the participation of Alexandra Lebedenko
On the Terrace and in the InnSpiration Space of the AXYHOTELS InnStyle in Milan, Alessia Dionisi with her Fornace 77 laboratory and the collaboration of Alexandra Lebedenko have created La Vetra. This piece of art, in painting and graffiti on wall and glass, represents an imposing scenography of the city of Milan, according to a profound and poetic reading of how AXYHOTELS InnStyle’s guests may spend their days.
The Locations
In La Vetra, ancient and modern intertwine. Along a wall of approximately 20 meters, the arches of San Lorenzo’s colonnade are figured in the foreground, framing some of the city's most identifiable buildings: Palazzo Feltrinelli, Palazzo Mondadori, the headquarters of Louis Vuitton Bagutta, Palazzo Unipol, and the buildings in Piazza Gae Aulenti. Inside the InnSpiration Space, there is also a view created of the Mudec - Museum of Milanese Cultures.
This piece of art aims to represent Milan in its most intimate essence, as a city that is forward-looking while living in a daily coexistence of ancient and modern. It is precisely for this reason that the artist turned their gaze away from commonly identifiable buildings, rather choosing those most intimately linked to the life and the culture that takes place there.
La Vetra is a work of art that should be observed in movement. The viewer will be able to walk alongside it, immersing themselves from time to time in the arches that define its spatial layout and in the scenes represented therein.
A double movement thus develops in length and depth, involving the viewer in each narrative segment, without precluding its reading in its entirety. It is a work of art in front of which everyone can stop or continue in the grandeur of places they have encountered or may choose to visit.
The Technique
La Vetra is composed of a mixed technique that combines painting and graffiti on two bases:, wall and glass. For the artist, who has worked on glass for years, scratching the pictorial surface to make the drawing emerge through the light, graffiti on the wall represents a phase of experimentation.
On the large walls painted a uniform phthalo blue, Alessia and Alexandra have traced this monumental urban scenography through the signs that emerged from the white of the wall. Above, six sheets of glass have been positioned with a slight separation, on which the characters who inhabit La Vetra are painted in etched bronze. These figures float on the surface, passing through an urban landscape in which they are not completely immersed while remaining halfway between the viewer and the work to which they belong. As visitors or locals, they inhabit and pass through those spaces frequently or only occasionally.
The figures represented are actually mannequins, the fully articulated wooden ones used to study body shapes in academies and art institutes. They resemble people, portrayed in familiar gestures, poses and situations in which anyone can recognize themself, but at the same time not recognize themself. Inanimate bodies, similar to the elegant streets that characterize Milan, they seem displayed and on display themselves, mimicking a world that we wished we belonged in.
The Tones (Styles, languages, ..)
Observing La Vetra, the influence of artistic expressions of the first half of the twentieth century is obvious, with Metaphysics and Surrealism predominating.
Those mannequins with human movements and precise views of perspective recall the landscapes of metaphysical paintings inhabited, as in this instance, by objects that contain a surrealist inspiration. In the piece of art within the InnSpiration Space which was conceived and created by Alessia Dionisi in collaboration with Alexandra Lebedenko, the setting in the same style seems more personal and intimate. In this view of the Mudec, Museum of Milanese Cultures, a mannequin with the appearance of a woman is shown sitting precariously balanced on a circle. This is a representation of the feminine, whose detached hands reach out like a sculpture upwards in a sense of rebirth that begins with this encounter between contrasts.
It is precisely this desire to grasp the essence that exists beyond the physical appearance of reality that inspired the artist, who here recreates realistic views interwoven with an aura of ecstatic perception.
Finally, the division into separate but connected sections becomes a unified discourse between materials, languages, and images to reveal the intimate connection between this work and the art of illustration. Thus, La Vetra seems to unfold like a book before the gaze of the spectator, or reader, who here finds themselves immersed in the world they are observing.
