ROME.- Cinzia says… is the first major retrospective on artist and fashion designer Cinzia Ruggeri (1942-2019), an unconventional figure who moved freely between different disciplines. Her life and versatile practice were animated by the desire to redefine the formal and functional status of elements of everyday life: from apparel to accessories, from furnishings to lighting. Cinzia Ruggeri was capable of creating a world based on an imaginative, provocative, elegant, and never predictable imaginary. With a continuous semantic metamorphosis, she investigated the expressive and behavioural potential of objects, as well as the architectural and social dimensions of the human body.
As a tribute to one of the protagonists of Italian creativity, the exhibition aims to offer as broad and complete a vision as possible of her career, thanks to in-depth research conducted in collaboration with Archivio Cinzia Ruggeri in Milan.
True to Cinzia Ruggeri's approach, the SOLO/MULTI section of the museum is transformed with the intent to defy any form of material or disciplinary classification. The exhibition display draws on certain recurring motifs in the artist’s research, such as the ziggurat, mixing them with supports that suggest the forms of postmodern design, creating an overall immersive atmosphere.
The exhibition features a selection of more than 150 accessories and garments from the Bloom, Cinzia Ruggeri and Cinzio Ruggeri collections, restored and presented for the first time since their runway debuts in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of these pieces are grouped to focus on specific projects or collaborations, such as those with Studio Alchimia, Occhiomagico and the performer and choreographer Valeria Magli, others are suspended from the ceiling, providing unusual perspectives.
The artist’s works, objects and installations scattered across the exhibition space create a mise-en-scène that is rich in contrasts and different meanings. In addition to the works made in more recent years, two installation projects are reconstructed: la règle du jeu?, the artist’s last show presented a few months before her death in 2019, and La leggerezza del peso, shown in 1989 in the context of the event Abitare il Tempo, under the art direction of Ugo La Pietra.
The playful title Cinzia says… is based on the opening lyrics of the song Elettrochoc by Matia Bazar, the band with which Ruggeri collaborated, designing costumes.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public programme that will involve several personalities with whom Cinzia Ruggeri collaborated and knew.
A monograph conceived as an expanded timeline will be created for the occasion, issued by Mousse Publishing. The publication is produced thanks to the support of the Italian Council (9th edition, 2020), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Cinzia says… will be presented at the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in London in October 2022.
Cinzia Ruggeri (Milan 1942-2019), artist, fashion and interior designer. After studying at the Accademia di Arti Applicate in Milan, in 1960 she had her debut exhibition at Galleria Prisma in which she showed a series of abstract paintings, accompanied by a text by Dino Buzzati. Following an internship at the Carven Atelier in Paris, in the mid 1960s, Ruggeri began working for her family’s company tailoring Unimac (Vimodrone, Milan). At the start of the 1970s she created Bloom, the brand with which she made her debut on Milan’s prêt-à-porter runways. In 1981, a new line called Cinzia Ruggeri was added to Bloom. Then, in 1986 a men’s line called Cinzio Ruggeri was introduced, an experiment that lasted just two years. After taking her leave of the fashion world at the end of the 1980s, Ruggeri continued and indeed intensified her production as an artist and designer, without interruption and until her death in 2019. Her projects have been exhibited in important international solo and group shows.
Recent solo exhibitions include: ...per non restare immobili, curated by Rita Selvaggio, Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno (2020); la règle du jeu?, Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2019); Finché si scherza, Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich (2019); Home. A User's Manual, curated by Fredi Fischli & Niels Olsen with Valentina Enhimb, GTA Exhibitions, ETH Zurich (2019); déconnexion, Campoli Presti, Paris (2019); Umbratile con Brio, curated by Mariuccia Casadio, Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: Lonely are all bridges, Birgit Jürgenssen and Cinzia Ruggeri, curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini, Galerie Hubert Winter, Wien (2021); FUORI, Quadriennale d’arte 2020, curated by Sarah Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli Cagol, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2020); We need more than one term for these big things, curated by Melanie Ohnemus, University of Applied Arts, Wien (2019); The Estate Summer, Kim? The contemporary Art Center, Riga (2019); Lost in the Pool of Shadows, curated by Luca Lo Pinto, Emanuel Layr, Rome (2019); Article 132–75, The Art Side of Kartell, curated by Ferruccio Laviani and Rita
Selvaggio, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2019); Tra l’inquietudine e il martello, Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2018); ITALIANA. L’Italia vista dalla moda, 1971–2001, curated by Maria Luisa Frisa and Stefano Tonchi, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2018).
