The first chapter of the re-signification of the Valentino Maison by creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli begins in Shanghai.
Valentino: Re-Signify Part One Shanghai is a conceptual and pragmatic process through which Piccioli wants to redefine the symbols of the Maison in a contemporary key, reinforcing its identity.
On December 19th, at Power Station of Arts in Shanghai, began Valentino: Re-Signify Part One Shanghai, a brand experience that mixes art and fashion, a multimedia event and a physical experience curated by Mariuccia Casadio and Jacopo Bedussi with an installation created by Kennedy London.
The one in Shanghai, from December 19 to January 17, is the first chapter in which Valentino’s themes come out of the archives to be grafted onto new areas and observed in a different way.
Resignification implies a link to the memory of a documented experience, an archive of data. It is a citation, recovery of signs, colors, pre-existing motifs. But not only.
It is also fundamentally appropriation, a personal way of interpreting them, elaborating them, recontextualizing them in our present, revisiting proportions and priorities, aesthetics, techniques and functions. And then, on the basis of these premises, the risk of projecting those signs towards the outside.
It’s not a fashion show or a presentation and it’s not even an exhibition but rather an experience designed to arouse doubt and curiosity that aims not to provide answers, which makes Valentino: Re-Signify Part One Shanghai an open system that pushes the viewer to develop different and personal interpretations.
Valentino’s past and present interact with the recent and contemporary history of artistic and visual research, from video art to underground cinema, and from photography to computer graphics. Brought to coexist and confront each other in a space that includes a variety of places, trajectories and meeting points.
A multiple and possible world in which we find illusory architectures, Maison’s garments from the remote or recent past, shoes and accessories from the Valentino Garavani Rockstud and Atelier collections, the oversized dresses from the Couture of Grace and Light, together with works by artists Jacopo Benassi, Cao Fei, Jonas Mekas, Stanley Mouse, Robby Müller, Quayola, Anna Ridler, Rachel Rose, Sølve Sundsbø, Natália Trejbalová and Weirdcore.
Explorations ranging from scientific research to fantasies that link the imaginary to nature and the urban environment, a possible world in which to think, experiment, wonder and have fun.
An exhortation to the pleasure of discovery, research, loss and finding oneself in a flow that mixes fashion, art, traditions, evolutions and mutations of a style and its link with time.
