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[Ham-uh k] installation of Adrien Missika to Italian Natuzzi Store in Miami

[Ham-uh k] installation of Adrien Missika to Italian Natuzzi Store in Miami it has been modified: 2015-12-10 di Benedetto Fiori

[ham-uh k] is the installation created by artist Adrien Missika for the opening of the store Natuzzi Italia at the Design District, during Miami Art Week. It was presented on 2 December 2015, and is the new stage of Open Art. The project that since 2007 has brought art to Natuzzi stores.

[ham-uh k], the site-specific installation by artist Adrien Missika is a large hammock - approximately eight meters by three in size - made with Natuzzi leathers and the result of an immersion in the Natuzzi Headquarters in Puglia, where the Style Center and the Product Development Center are located, which constitute the creative heart of the company.

"After a long search we chose Adrien Missika - says Pasquale Junior Natuzzi, Marketing & Communication Strategic Program Manager of the brand - a young and brilliant artist to whom we have entrusted the arduous task of interpreting harmony, which is the archetype on which our philosophy of living is based, summarized in the concept: Natuzzi blends design and function to create harmonious living. Adrien's work is always inspired by the places he visits, just as our design is inspired by the place we come from, Puglia. We invited him to our headquarters to get him in touch with our land and our work and from this experience the idea of ​​[ham-uh k] was born ”.

[ham-uh k] (in Italian àmaca), bed of net or cloth, originating in tropical countries, suspended by the ends to two supports (trees, poles or other).

In Species of Spaces, Geroges Perec describes the bed as “the individual space par excellence, the elementary area of ​​the body”. Starting from these reflections and from the activity of Natuzzi - one of the main Italian design brands, aimed at the production of sofas, armchairs and furnishing accessories - Adrien Missika played on the paradoxes of an anthropometric space, transforming it into a suitable place to welcome a collective experience, a harmonious and dreamlike "being together".

Missika's installation is in continuity with her Siesta Club research, a work that reflects on the individual space of the hammock and therefore on the sense of relaxation, rest, free time. For Open Art Adrien, however, decided to overturn this object, altering its dimensions. From a place calibrated on the individual, [ham-uh k] instead takes on a collective dimension, a harmonious and dreamlike “being together”.

"The hammock is a functional object made by humans to rest", Missika says. “I like the idea of ​​giving this object a break, making it a sculpture or a painting, abstracting it from its functionality, but without depriving it of its stage presence”.

To further underline the hybridization, Missika used leathers from the Italian tannery (Udine) owned by the Group and subsequently selected by the artist with the team of the Natuzzi Style Center in Puglia. He carefully deconstructed the material bringing it to an elementary, almost raw condition: the use of six whole leather cloaks thus refers to the image of an elementary and archetypal hammock.

Looking at the installation from below, the uncut skins recall the shapes of a cave, a dark belly, but also a typical element of exotic culture. The fusion of a noble and high quality material with the roughness of the artistic gesture gives rise to an intense intrinsic contrast to the object-sculpture: the lines of the skin come together in a colored pattern, discreet traces of the artist's structural gesture.

Missika, whose work often translates the experience of travel, of movement, both physical and mental, has created a new form of travel for Open Art, to be done through imagination and dreams. A sort of magic carpet for an interior journey towards a place where time is suspended.

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] 07 Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] 02 Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] 03 Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] 04 Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] 05 Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] 06 Photo by Monica Schipper

Natuzzi Open Art [ham-uh k] Photo by Monica Schipper

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