AMETRIA

Athens, GR, 2015

curatorial team:
nicoletta de rosa, polina kosmadaki, alessandro pasini, tomaso piantini, yorgos tzirtzilakis

project team: alessandro pasini, marta scarcia, tomaso piantini with architects srl

service:
exhibition design
light design
installation management
art curator

AMETRIA is the privilege of disproportion, of excess, the rejection of an overall vision, the error that turns out to be right.

The inception of Ametria's project was all about discussing how to get lost, how to fool visitors, and how to design a space that can express disproportion on its own. Disproportion not meant as a physical concept, but as a radical state of mind. According to this, Ametria is an exhibition that breaks the rules of exhibition design. The visitors must be put in error, it doesn't matter which or how many artworks they "collect".

No path, no settled sequence of rooms, no sequence of artworks, or at least not a clear one.

The exhibition design, fine tuned during the installation process, is all about the process more than the result. It's a matter ofmaking choices, failing while trying, walking the wrong path 3 times and miss the right one. Ametria's design is against order, but it's made by a series of discrete elements, ordered and measured. Ametria breaks all the traditional ergonomic rules but not to discomfort visitors. The project is designed to force the visitors not to walk the show "just like any other exhibition". It's more of a journey, physical and mental.

The change from the tradition is clear immediately after stepping in the dim-lighted room: 4 possible entrances are available to the visitor. Before having a look to any artwork the visitor starts making choices, right or wrong it doesn't matter, since there's no "right or wrong". Before he can even have a look at the artworks he enters narrow or even barely enough passages.

Two different collections are shown in Ametria, Benaki's greek art and Deste's contemporary artists. The relations between artworks and collections, clearer and separated in the beginning become more and more extreme and merged during the journey leading to the end of the exhibition. The density of artworks is higher in the beginning while it reduces as you explore the maze,  giving you room for a more sophisticated mental exploration.

The complexity and variety of techniques and material led the design towards a display system that can allow a high degree of freedom during the hanging phase, the traditional exhibition modules evolve from simple hanging panels to something new. They transform into heavy objects, volumes, architectures.

The base module is 1 meter thick, 3.6 meter tall, up to 8 meter long. The modules are dark, massive. The exhibition become artwork by itself, like a living organism, made of different bodies to recreate a whole. The dialogue between artworks and space is the basis of Ametria. The modules allow or obstruct the view of artworks. Sometimes they keep separate the artworks; sometimes they group together artworks, letting them to communicate in uncommon and unforeseen ways.

The artworks transform into exhibition tools: they are isolated, mistreated, used to superimpose a different meaning to the one beside.  At the same time each artwork is respected and never deprived of their original identity. Each piece must be seen as a part of a whole while still being observed by its own.

The maze serves as natural selection system, to disorient the visitor, while leading him through the journey. Each visitor can experience his own exhibition: entire sections of works can be missed, while the same work can be seen twice. And every time, depending on the arrival path, the same artwork can be seen by different perspectives and in relation to different artworks, like a musical composition, where is not the single note that creates a feeling but the interval between notes that creates anxiety, happiness, sadness or comfort. The presence of a variable number of visitors is another key factor of the exhibition. Like in a real maze, the sensation of being lost works as an important part of the experience.

The lighting design, again, is far away from the standard of exhibition lighting, it's an integral part of Ametria. Two set of light dominate the space. A high intensity linear lighting system is placed 10 cm above the floor, just under each exhibition modules. This system creates the illusion that the massive, heavy exhibition modules are floating on a light cushion. A second layer of lights, hanging from the ceiling is dim to the minimum. These lights are aiming to the artworks. Like an apparent meaningless error, strong light are where nothing is, and vice versa. This forces the visitor to view the artworks closer than usual and expected, thus inducing a different comprehension of the works.

Ametria is not meant nor thought to rethink the theory of exhibition design. Nonetheless it can be seen as a big step from the traditional exhibition design; or as an artwork by itself.