Finissage: TRANSforming

Panel discussion for the finissage of the current exhibition by GIACOMO PALA with:

• Giacomo Pala (https://www.giacomopala.com/)
• Anna Paul (http://www.annapaul.at/)
• Andreas Lechner (https://www.andreaslechner.at/)

Since the beginning of its existence, humanity has transformed objects, things and concepts in order to produce novelties: a constant transformation of things. The result of these transformations is an increasingly complex world where histories, cultures, technologies and nature are constantly changing, intermingling in more and more complex hybrids. To discuss this theme, this exhibition starts with a precedent: “MAN Transforms”, an exhibition curated by Hans Hollein in the 1970s. In this exhibition, famous for re-imagining the exhibition space, were also exhibited what Hollein defined “typical objects” (typischen Gegenstands). Amongst these, bread: something that all civilizations have, sometimes holy, sometimes not; always the same, yet always different - itself the result of a transformation of raw materials. This exhibition reworks this theme.

The main space is about the transformation of the exhibition itself into something new: the transformation of “Transform” - transforming. This section is the result of a series of formal alterations. Here, one can find objects made of a transformation of bread: 3d scanned, then 3d printed in clay in collaboration with CeraLab; in turn set within an object composed as an abstract and figurative whole that relates to the bread itself, on one side, and the second room, on the other. In the second room, in fact, there is a more direct reinterpretation of Hollein’s work: a grid of bread loaves, drawn by Hollein himself, but transformed into a new spatial environment. Over-all, this exhibition presents a range of ways to produce novelty through transformation, generating a series of spatial settings, each both literal and non-literal; abstract and figurative; colourful and neutral.

Giacomo Pala is an architect and researcher based in Innsbruck where he is a research associate at the Institute of Architectural Theory of the Architecture Faculty. Previously, he has taught workshops at several institutions, including the CUINDA program at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (2020) and collaborated with a few practices. Through his work and research – alone or in collaboration with others - he seeks to address both theory and design in the attempt to theorise and formalise architecture as a syncretic experience: a dialogic object capable of combining different parts, ideas, aesthetics, forms and policies.