Paper/Cosmic Breeze by Gianni Pettena

At Motel (Building B3), Manifattura Tabacchi hosts Paper/Cosmic Breeze, an installation by architect and artist Gianni Pettena, curated by Davide Giannella. Originally created in 1971 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design,
the work was exhibited for the first time in Italy in Milan, at BiM, an urban regeneration project developed by Manifattura Placemakers on behalf of Kervis SGR, which also oversees the development of Manifattura Tabacchi for Aermont Capital.

Co-founder and inspirational figure of the Italian Radical Architecture movement in the late 1960s, out of which a significant part of contemporary experimentation in architecture and design emerged, Gianni Pettena developed, through projects, furniture, installations, exhibitions, theoretical writings, essays, and critical texts, a line of research aimed at overcoming disciplinary boundaries, redefining and reinventing languages, expressive codes, and design tools.

The exhibition is curated by Davide Giannella, known for his research into the relationships between the art system and the various fields of contemporary culture. The lighting intervention is by Specific, a collective founded within BiM by artists Patrick Tuttofuoco and Andrea Sala, director and author Nic Bello, and food designer Alessandra Pallotta. The collective was later joined by artists Marco Bruzzone, Gabriele Bianchi and Martina Ferrari, together with project manager Maria Elena Morganti.

Paper/Cosmic Breeze therefore inaugurates Motel‘s exhibition programme, renewing Manifattura Tabacchi’s cultural offering with a rich calendar of exhibitions, happenings and events.

In Flesh/Afternoon Sunset, conceived in close relation to Paper/Cosmic Breeze by Gianni Pettena, a living presence moves between matter, gravity, and space, guided by the qualities of the environment. A practice of exploration and listening, in which the performer becomes a temporary hinge between surfaces, volumes, voids, and distances. An essential physical inquiry, where gestures, movements, and pauses reshape balances and proximities, allowing shifting geographies between body, matter, and architecture to emerge.