FIORANO.- MUT is presenting Surface Matters, a special project dedicated to photography which for the first time interacts with the ceramic surfaces of a specifically-designed exhibition display inside the Mutina building.

Important photographic works selected from the collection of Massimo Orsini and presented on ceramic wall modules, challenge surface, the gaze and their own narrative content. Not just an exhibition, but an unexpected path of images, an innovative stratified setting in close dialogue with the architecture of the space.
Photographs by twenty-six artists, from Man Ray to Richard Prince, by way of Robert Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Luigi Ghirri, but also Wolfgang Tillmans, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Demand, Louise Lawler, and Zoe Leonard.

Analog or digital, formal, conceptual, performative, quotidian, mental, the works on view narrate the image as a personal and universal portrait of the world, only surface of the profound action of the gaze. Photography as language or necessity, as universe, history, mirror, reflex or reflection.

Surface Matters challenges the tradition of display, gives new form to the exhibition space and is shaped by it. With this novel installation that breaks away from the typical neutral environment of art presentation, Mutina chooses unveil its history and research on ceramics, triggering a relationship with the power of the images by some of the most outstanding protagonists of contemporary art.

Subject, foreground and background intertwine to generate new layers, different possible narratives. Flatness or tridimensional effects, illusions and plays on surface emerge amidst the architectural lines of the ceramic settings, inhabitable spaces that are simply suggested, but capable of representing a new frame for an alternative interpretation of a contemporary collection and the history it contains.

Artists in the exhibition: Robert Adams, Matthew Barney, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Francesco Gennari, Luigi Ghirri, Robert Gober, Peter Hujar, Luisa Lambri, Louise Lawler, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Sharon Lockhart, Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon, Wolfgang Tillmans, Franco Vimercati, Christopher Williams, Francesca Woodman.

Mutina for Art is an ambitious and varied project that includes MUT, a dedicated exhibition space within the company headquarters, This Is Not a Prize, an important prize awarded annually, and Dialogue, a series of collaborations with artists, galleries and partners coming from various creative and with international art institutions. Sensitivity to form, desire for innovation and willingness to incorporate the most diverse visual stimulation in today’s world have been part of the Mutina mission since its inception, and now take the form of a new program with contemporary art at its core. The appointment of the curator Sarah Cosulich in Mutina coincides with the aim of the company to make its commitment to contemporary art structured and articulated in order to make it a source of influence, experience, and above all a territory of exchange.