For the first time in Singapore, this show by artist-designer Cleto Munari in collaboration with leaders of the transavangarde movement: Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia; and world-known architects Alessandro Mendini and Marcello Morandini, highlights the development of “disegno italiano”. This exhibition features unique handmade art furniture and objects, exploring liberal theories between modernism and postmodernism.

As a reaction against the conceptual and minimal art of the 1970s, Munari and the artists of the transavangarde movement show how the figure is needed to produce a passageway between the serenity of social communication and the turbulence of the artistic act, thus returning to the portrayal of recognisable objects in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colour harmonies and radical shapes.

Throughout his productive adventure, Cleto Munari has been protecting the idea of the figure as a disruptive event by constructing his very own language that ranges from architecture to jewelry making, from décor to decorative objects. He has demonstrated how the contemporary artist who possesses multiple aptitudes can observe the world without feeling the need to manipulate it, but how the figure introduces beauty as a defence against the inertia of the daily routine.

Image: © Cleto Munari