Salone del Mobile.Milano The Orbit’s Orbit Grand Finale!

The Orbit's Orbit

Performative Installation

On November 10th, the second major international event of the Salone del Mobile.Milano, "The Orbit’s Orbit" came to a successful finale in Shanghai!

November 7-10, The Salone del Mobile.Milano held its second major international event in China. China is a strategic market, which became the seventh highest Wood-Furniture supply chain export destination during the first seven months of 2024, for a value of 286.9 million euros, offering interesting business opportunities for Made in Italy. This interest was confirmed during the 2024 edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano, which – after the lengthy post-pandemic transition – saw China back in first place in terms of numbers of visitors from abroad. On this occasion, the Salone, accompanied by the ICE Agency, has chosen to be a partner of the West Bund Art & Design, a point of reference on Shanghai's cultural scene: a prestigious event that attracts galleries and visitors from all over the world and that shares with the Salone the focus on innovation, creativity and being the ideal platform to explore the intersections between the two worlds. 

The Orbit's Orbit

Performative Installation

Sunday 10th November featured When Design meets Art. A Conversation between Italy and China, the talk curated Annalisa Rosso, Editorial Director & Cultural Events Advisor of the Salone del Mobile.Milano. The talk will offer a wide-ranging and multidisciplinary perspective, highlighting the way in which the dialogue between art and design can open new avenues for creativity and innovation, especially in a global  context such as that between Italy and China. 

Moderator: Wang Xu,

 design media expert

When Design meets Art.

 A Conversation between Italy and China

The Chinese designer Wu Bin, a visionary and far-sighted thinker, known for his unmistakable Modern Orientalism interior design style, took the stage. Bin drew continuous inspiration from Chinese ink paintings and his sophisticated mastery of the use of materials, colours, chiaroscuro and proportions informs skilful combinations of Eastern and Western furnishings and works of art, exploring the most modern lifestyle scenarios for people in China today and how to connect with nature for newfound inner peace. He was joined by Feng Cao, founder of the 20C Gallery, collector and aesthetic researcher. Cao produced juxtapositions of works of art and vintage Italian furniture - with a preference for the period spanning the 1950s to the 1980s - in order to deepen his own concepts of modern aesthetics stemming from the fusion of East and West, in a celebration of the best design and craftsmanship of modern man, because only by valorising the past can we move towards a better future. 

Wu Bin,

 Designer and Architect, Founder of W.DESIGN

Feng Cao,

 Founder of the 20C Gallery,

 Collector and Aesthetic Communicator

Also joining them was Matilde Cassani, an architect and artist straddling the fine line between visual arts and design, interested in developing design objects, installations, displays, visual communication and investigations of spaces and architectures aimed at the performative dimension. Each of the three artists and designers from Italy and China shared their point of view, making for an interesting exploratory session and dialogue, in the round and from multiple standpoints, on art and design, East and West, spirituality and everyday life from an international perspective. 

Matilde Cassani, Artist and Architect

The scenography comes alive through the movements of human bodies. Spectators and performers, merging with the spaces defined by design, transform the exhibition into a public square, in which the bodies move across the space, tracing geometries and living architectures. The Orbit's Orbit is a tableau vivant, a moving painting, in which actors, acrobats and spectators become the protagonists of a collective narrative: a fluid and dynamic sequence of scenes of public life. 

The exhibition area evokes a radial city playing host to an urban party, enlivened not just by the spatial mobility of the locals/spectators, but also and especially by an ideal and cultural mobility. The performers, walking in a single direction, take possession of the spaces occupied by design and turn them into an inhabited interior. Cassani’s work was directly inspired by The Orbit, by its shape, its semantic resonances and its expressive qualities. The space has become a repository of meaning, a virtual score played out by the powerful presence of furnishings by 36 exhibiting brands, the ballet dancers and the expertly choreographed visitors. 

The Orbit’s Orbit

Performances

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Stay tuned！