LORO
Riccardo Previdi is the artist who conceived LORO, or THEIR, the title of the site specific intervention which runs along the wallpaper which evolves around all the walls of the apartment.
An army of maneki neko “good luck cats” from Japanese tradition, stand out as if in a waterfall filling the space and surrounding the visitor. It is a slow disclosure that implies an inevitable, disorienting, but at the same time welcoming game of perception. The entrance to the apartment is characterised by black and white walls, large blotches which pull away from the floor and that, only after entering the main room, will show themselves in their grandeur, to reveal giantic maneki neko. On the contrary, in the attic the same cats multiply without interruption and advance in battalions, taking shape until they become part of the ambience.
The “Welcome Cats” born from the Japanese tradition have also been adopted by the contemporary Chinese, and represent two sides of the same coin. On the one hand the diaspora; the laundry, the bar-tobacconist, the trattoria beneath the house, that change ownership but not activity; on the other hand they are the ever more evident manifestation of a new superpower. Riccardo Previdi’s work draws upon the heritage of the contemporary urban landscape to decontextualize it and raise it to the level of totem. LORO stimulates an open point, which is sensitive and which invites us to make a difference by seeing things from another point of view.
RICCARDO PREVIDI
Riccardo Previdi studied architecture and visual arts. This twofold training led him to become interested in the relationship between art and design.
He has exhibited at the 1st Moscow Biennial, at Manifesta 7, at the Turin Triennale, at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, at Herford MARTA, at De Vleeshal in Middelburg and at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, at Villa Croce in Genoaand Museion in Bolzano, to name just a few. The artist has worked with several galleries in Italy and abroad. He is currently represented by the Francesca Minini Gallery in Milan. After living in Berlin for fifteen years, today he lives in Merano, in Alto Adige, and teaches contemporary art at the Faculty of Design and Arts of the Free University of Bolzano.
A recent collaboration with the Milanese architecture firm pconp led to the creation of the concept for the British fashion store chain FLANNELS. The first store to adopt the new image was opened in Oxford Street, London.
The artistic investigations of Riccardo Previdi have always questioned the possibilities and the limits of technological / scientific thought, exposing the complex mechanisms that lie behind the objects and images that surround us in everyday life.