New Exhibition: Michele De Lucchi. With the hand and the mind Forty years of experimentation between art, design and architecture

Volumnia, the exhibition space dedicated to art and design inside the former church of Sant’Agostino in the heart of Piacenza, from 6 April to 14 September presents the exhibition Michele De Lucchi. With the hand and the mind | Forty years of experimentation between art, design and architecture curated by Paola Nicolin and dedicated to Michele De Lucchi’s most personal works. It explores his wide-ranging production, from architectural models to his experimental design objects from Produzione Privata, as well as sculptures and artworks.

For over forty years, Michele De Lucchi has been active in the fields of architecture, interior and product design, graphics and installations, with projects that push back the boundaries of the already imagined and the already built. But his main source of inspiration in this professional world lies in a more intimate ‘hands-on’ process, where working manually in direct contact with matter, the architect is free to create new forms, beyond any practical or functional constraints. For De Lucchi, working with his hands allows thought to connect directly with the physicality of the real world. In this manualmental process, the idea is thus turned into a signifying object.

The works on show

A selection of prototypes and historical pieces, which have become rare over time due to their limited production, outline the identity of Produzione Privata: the design workshop founded in 1990 by Michele De Lucchi and Sibylle Kicherer, to give continuity to the Memphis experience and to devise experimental objects, independent from any market logic. These include furniture, furnishings and lamps made by craftsmen, the result of work on the border between art and design.

The exhibition path continues with the display of objects and artworks, research undertaken by De Lucchi in 2003 and which today includes over 500 sculptures, most of them made of wood, his material of choice. These unique works are tangible evidence of the process that indissolubly links the search for new forms and architectural concepts to professional projects. For the occasion, three models of small stone architecture produced in 2007 are also on show.

The exhibition is completed with pencil sketches, tempera drawings and engravings, offering an overview of the range of techniques adopted by the artist to express concepts in nuce, to formulate hypotheses and come up with new solutions.

The Volumnia project started out in 2018 inside the Church of Sant’Agostino, a historical venue in the city of Piacenza, the beauty of which remained hidden from the public for years. Now, thanks to Enrica De Micheli, a gallery owner with twenty years of experience, new life has been breathed into a space where art, culture and social life meet and intertwine. Volumnia paves the way for research into historical design with an eye to contemporary art, through a careful approach that couples a project linked to the world of furniture design with a cultural calendar of exhibitions and events.

Michele De Lucchi

Architect. He has been a protagonist of the avant-garde in architecture and design since the 1970s. He designs objects for leading companies and produces architectural projects in Italy and around the world: from industrial buildings to cultural centres.

He is a renowned professor and teaches at the Politecnico in Milan. In 2000, he was awarded the honour of Officer of the Italian Republic by President Ciampi. In 2022 he was given the Compasso d’Oro Award for his Career.

A selection of his works are exhibited in major museums in Italy and around the world. Since 2003, he has sculpted wooden models to seek the essentiality of architectural form and provide a source of inspiration for professional projects. He is a founder and member of AMDL CIRCLE.