DIARIO DI UN DESIGNER. Vito Nesta at Palazzo Reale Genova

Vito Nesta is a designer who graduated in Interior Design in Florence; although originally from Puglia, he lives and works in Milan. Designer, art director, interior decorator, and artisan, he’s driven by his attraction to foreign cultures. His creative thoughts are expressed through projects of graphic and product design, interior decor, photography, and painting. Previously on WeVux with Boaboa Restaurant, in 2018 he founded his personal brand, Grand Tour. The designer is also the protagonist of the exhibition Diario di un designer. Sessantanove giorni nel segno di Vito Nesta (Diary of a designer. Sixty-nine days in the name of Vito Nesta), curated by Alessandro Valenti and Luca Parodi, on show at the Royal Palace of Genoa.

The event is the museum’s first exhibition dedicated to a contemporary designer, in collaboration with the Department of Architecture and Design of the University of Genoa. It is part of the Genova Design Week program, which took place from 17 to 21 June 2021. As stated by the Director of Palazzo Reale and Polo Museale of Liguria, Alessandra Guerrini, with this event Palazzo Reale decides to reopen to the public by offering the opportunity to rediscover spaces and works, intertwined with specially calibrated design products. This exhibition is also the result of the first convention that saw the Department of Design and Architecture of the University of Genoa engaged, on behalf of the Palazzo Reale, in the development of research on the theme “Design for cultural heritage: from container to content”, explained Niccolò Casiddu, Director of the Architecture and Design Department of the University of Genoa.

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The exhibition runs through parallel paths that show the designer’s work in two distinct exhibition modes that retrace, on the one hand, the experience during the days of the lockdown and, on the other, pay homage to the Genoese residence through contemporary objects and furnishings put into dialogue with the historical pieces of the museum. The first exhibition is an installation. In the Gallery of Mirrors, a table collects one hundred dishes created in the sixty-nine days of domestic isolation, using ceramics as the pages of a diary. “The result is a figurative world, sometimes abstract, in which the imagined becomes real and vice versa. A place where the echoes of distant populations, ancestral beauties, wild natures, and chiaroscuro cities relate to the rigor of prisms and geometric graphics and with the ancient mystery depicted on coins and cards.

The second exhibition mode is mimetic and sees the sign of Vito Nesta infiltrate the rooms of the museum, giving life to a subtle game of references and mimesis. The experience unfolds along with the finely decorated rooms with stuccoes and frescoes, where the observer unwittingly finds himself searching for and discovering the objects created by the designer. As Vito Nesta declares: “In the solemnity of a place guardian of the past, where time seems to have stopped, I wanted to establish a dialogue between objects, in a continuous cross-reference between ancient and contemporary, opening new possibilities for reflection and enjoyment to visitors”.

On display: the table designed for the exhibition and made by Studio F; the limited edition poufs and the two one-of-a-kind benches, produced by Tappezzerie Druetta and lined with fabrics from RUBELLI‘s collection, which become part of the museum’s furnishings. The Turquerie carpet, designed for Les-Ottomans, the Grand Tour ceramic vases, created for the exhibition Musica da Viaggio. Vito Nesta nelle stanze di Giuseppe Verdi in 2019, the glass vases presented this year with the Effetto Vetro company.

The entrance to the exhibition Diario di un designer. Sessantanove giorni nel segno di Vito Nesta is always included in the museum ticket. You have until September 26 to visit it!
To know more visit Palazzo Reale di Genova’s website!
Photography by Andrea Pedretti. Portrait by Cartacarbone

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