Italy, 1988
H 160 x W 120 cm
Wood and mirror
Good condition
€5,200
A wide black-and-white chequered frame, edged all round with a yellow crenellation that projects beyond the plane, and topped by a small pennant of the same colour. The mirror itself occupies a central square much smaller than its frame: the function is relegated to the centre, the decoration takes up everything else.
Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019) is the central figure of Studio Alchimia, a Milanese workshop founded in 1976 that preceded Memphis and set out, before it, the principle of a design freed from function. There Mendini developed “redesign”: taking an ordinary object and covering it with a decoration that shifts its meaning. “Ollo”, designed in 1988, applies this principle to a mirror — the most commonplace object in an interior becomes a graphic surface.
A piece from a generation of mirrors that Alchimia turned into a manifesto, at a time when the movement had reached maturity. Good condition.
