Huge success at Poltrona Frau showroom for the Laura Palmieri exhibition

10/01/2017

From 15 to 23 December 2016, an exhibition was held at Poltrona Frau's Roman showroom that proved itself a huge success in terms of public interest and attendance.

The exhibition, dubbed "Tane", is a personal project by Neapolitan painter Laura Palmieri based on an artistic and highly original representation of a number of intriguingly unusual dens or hideouts, and the animals that dwell in them.

Consisting of 13 works in ink on canvas, the exhibition consisted of several paintings, all united by very light strokes that traced and retraced the texture of the canvas, depicting a variety of "hideouts" serving as permanent or temporary hiding places.

The end result is a collection of decontextualized urban buildings, campsite tents or caravans - all separated from their normal use and function - that turn into veritable architectural icons. In fact, there is hardly any trace, or so it seems, of the human element that once dwelt in all these buildings, and all these "hideouts" feature a decidedly monolithic and isolated appearance.

In actual fact, however, if we examine the painting more closely, looking through small crevices or open windows, we find that buried deep within these hideouts are secret tales of ordinary everyday life that intrigue the viewer. On occasion, some of the dens are actually guarded by outsize animals with staring, glowing eyes, while others are real houses, and others turn out to be real prisons or places in which to live, suffer or play.

In short, this was certainly an exhibition worth seeing, and one that Poltrona Frau immediately caught the true essence of and, therefore, sought to promote it by housing it in its showrooms, among its finest iconic and timeless pieces. The "locus" of living thus remains always at the center of the viewer's attention, albeit viewed from two entirely different perspectives.