(toskanews) – An imaginary, yet real, conversation between two artists who, despite never having met, have followed common paths. Fondazione Ica Milano inaugurates its 2025 with a two-person exhibition, dedicated to Birgit Jürgenssen and Cinzia Ruggeri, curated by Maurizio Cattelan together with Marta Papini: Lonely are all bridges.
«The reason why we thought of them together – Papini explained to askanews – is precisely the fact that they crossed the arts in a very free way, therefore they turned to photography, drawing, fashion, design in a very free and this feeling of freedom has also made them more difficult to categorize and therefore difficult to discover and photograph as a whole”.
In the works of Jurgenssen and Ruggeri, consumer society passes through, but also a very personal vision of how to deal with it; there is fashion, but it is a metamorphic, surprising and unexpected fashion. And above all there is a female point of view on society which, although linked to the Seventies and Eighties, is extremely contemporary. Also because it starts from firm positions, but not ideological ones and clearly placed within the same system.
«Their reflection on the figure of women in contemporary society – added Marta Papini – I find very current and therefore in some way the fact of putting them in dialogue could make them talk about current issues, that is, the role of women in society and how they they looked for a way out of the imposed role.”
The exhibition, at times very abstract, at others inextricably linked to the objects, is also a project consistent with Ica’s vision and his attention to the arts, in the broadest sense of the term.
«This is a place that is not unique – said Alberto Salvadori, director of Ica Milan – it is a place with many voices. And this is an exhibition that contains many voices, from an artist who is a curator to two artists who have never met, but who dialogue perfectly, therefore almost as if it were a séance in some way, as if we were living a dimension of a ‘otherness compared to their original condition. There is a lot of irony, there is criticism and also an intelligent stance on fashion, there is photography, there is everything. So I’d say it’s a perfect synthesis of what we’re trying to do in here. And there is absolute freedom of expression.”
A freedom that also belongs to Cattelan, here in the role of curator, a little invisible, but as is typical of him, capable of informing a type of look at the contemporary that is anything but obvious.
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