Cinzia Ruggeri

Campoli Presti is pleased to present Cinzia Ruggeri's solo exhibition La Leggerezza del Peso and the reprint of her monograph Cinzia Says.. edited by Macro and Mousse Publishing.

La Leggerezza del Peso (The Lightness of Weight) takes Ruggeri’s 1989 installation of the same name as a point of departure to explore her multidisciplinary practice. In her installation, the last living elephant, unable to genetically reproduce, explodes and preserves itself in household appliances. Various eccentric objects constitute an environment of mediation between the human, the animal and the absurd.

Ruggeri’s experimental attitude, questioning common sense and functionality, is extended in her interior and furniture design. Velvet plays an important role in Ruggeri’s furniture, continuing her fascination with the emotional potential of textiles and their sculptural qualities already present in her fashion pieces. The barely shown pouf Ferenczi (1993), named after the Hungarian psychanalyst, is a manta-ray shaped velvet upholstery whose fins serve as blankets, while the giant velvet hand Mano (2000) can worth both as a standing sculpture or as a sofa caught between the fantastic and the practical. Some of Ruggeri’s most iconic garments like Abito LED, a white chiffon dress whose lights can be activate through an embedded button, are also a space of interaction. From closets to shoes to gloves, Ruggeri’s works are a space need to be most of all inhabited.

An extensive retrospective of Cinzia Ruggeri’s work was held at Macro, Rome, travelling to Goldsmiths CCA, London in 2022. Recent solo exhibitions inlcude Home. A user’s manual at ETH Zurich and…Per Non Restare Immobili*, curated by Rita Selvaggio, Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno in 2020; Déconnexion, Campoli Presti, Paris in 2018, and Cin Cin 1980-2015, at 10 Corso Como in 2015. Her work has been presented in Lives of an object, Andreas Melas and Arch, Athens (2021), Lonely Are All Bridges, Birgit Jürgensen and Cinzia Ruggeri, curated by Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini, Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna (2021), Fuori, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2020), We need more than one term for these big things, University of Applied Arts, Vienna (2019), The Estate Summer, Contemporary Art Center, Riga (2019), Article 132–75, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Langenhagen (2019); Arts & Foods, curated by Germano Celant, Triennale di Milano (2015) and Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2011).