Filippo Manzini

Filippo Manzini‘s (Florence, 1975) practice has always focused on his relationship with space, with a particular interest in the urban space. For years now, his work as a sculptor has been expressed mainly in the outdoor environment, in urban “non-places”. His research on sculpture and site-specific public art installations began in Los Angeles in 2012. In 2017, Manzini created Strength, a project in Milan that consists of a series of installations in the urban fabric of the Naviglio Grande, five interventions along a path that stretches from the church of San Cristoforo sul Naviglio to Piazza Santo Stefano. Generous gestures that give a measure to the environment, define its shape or emphasize its presence and lines of force, in a sort of perceptual map, which, in a sequence of interventions, makes urban space more accessible and recognizable, in a newfound balance, not necessarily stable. His installations in the city bring the attention to ordinary, silent spaces, hidden from the eye precisely because they are under the eyes of the everyday, missing pieces of places undefined or awaiting definition. The site-specific works unveil their existence, tension the signs that highlight their dimensions, complete their forms, give a measure, reconstructing them, to unexpected, unusual but present spaces of the everyday.

Filippo Manzini has exhibited in solo and group shows in a variety of public and private institutions and art research spaces including: Nonplusultra, Galleria Daniele Ugolini Contemporary, Florence, 2007; Pittura /Materiale, Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Florence, 2009; ADC Contemporary, Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA, 2012; Into Carrara, Galleria Nicola Ricci, Carrara, 2012; Artissima, Galleria Artra, Milan 2013: Equilibrium, an idea for Italian sculpture, Galeria Mazzoleni, London/Turin, 2018.
He has created projects for art research spaces including: 25 hours a day, Villa Romana, Florence, 2010; Open Studios, Contemporary CCC Strozzina, Florence, 2010; Brewery Art Walk, The Brewery Arts Complex, Los Angeles, CA, 2012; Venice Beach Biennial, Hammer Museum, Venice Beach, CA, 2012; Florence, Italian Cultural Institute Berlin, Berlin, 2015; Dolomiti Contemporanee, Progetto Borca, Belluno, 2015; NUOVE //LA PRIMA PLASTICS, Residency, Vicenza, 2017; MARS – Milan Artist Run Space, Milan, 2018; VIR viafarini in-residence, Milan 2018; Dooppio registro, Spazio Gamma, Milan 2019; Spazio/Forma/Concetto, Fondazione Kenta in Milan, 2020; Spazio/Territorio, Archivio Agnetti, Milan, 2022. In 2023, Manzini took part in the project Orecchio Assoluto, created by Remo Salvadori and hosted by ASSAB ONE.

The interventions are born in space and for space: as Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) pointed out, “man acquires awareness from the emptiness that surrounds him, and he gives it a physical form and expression; the effect of this transfiguration, which elevates space in the sign of emotions, is the very conception of space.” With this traction between action, sign, material and space, the artist’s works poetically make evident those voids that are sometimes scraps of precarious spaces, planes and surfaces waiting for supports, dense shadows of a city crushed by its stratifications, and raises them in the sign of emotions. From dark underpasses, to metal bridges, to open widenings, but also in closed spaces, ravines of a misunderstood urban domesticity. In creating sculpture, the artist also operates through performance, actions he performs himself and in which he presents his sculpture to the space, made of materials he assembles in the moment. There is a necessary relationship between materials, space and gestures. Between conception and realization there are preparatory drawings, mock-ups and sketches that render the image of the object in space. The ephemeral character of the performance gives back the sense of a moment, the restitution of a measure of urban space in an instant, made immutable in time thanks to the photography that always accompanies his works as an integral part of them.