A versatile artist born in 1974,
Gianluca Vassallo works at San Teodoro,
in Sardinia (Italy), and around the world.
His research involves the use of video,
audio, photography and installations,
focusing on relational aspects (between
people, objects and spaces) and processes
(creative, productive), utilizing empathy
and lightness as the primary tools
of investigation.
Alongside his personal artistic
production, with his White Box Studio
Vassallo has forged a path that leads
companies in the fields of industrial
design, fashion, publishing and various
cultural institutions, to transform their
activities of communication through an
outlook of greater complexity.
For Foscarini, Gianluca Vassallo has
created the projects: Twice Light (2015),
Fare Luce (2017) Maestrie (2017), Vite
(2020).
Gianluca, with Notturno the
objects in the images are lamps by
Ferruccio Laviani. What is the best
way to narrate an object?
GV: “The best way to narrate an
object is to live with it, to use it, to feel it.
It is intimacy, above all of the kind that is
built over time, that allows you to delve
into the various semantic strata of things.
This is true of everything, but particularly
of objects that have been envisioned and
designed, that already have a narrative
imprint of their own.”
Do you also talk about objects
through direct experience? Is that
what happened with Notturno Laviani?
GV: “I too seek intimacy with objects.
But my creative starting point is always
light, even when I have to talk about an
object. I imagine the light that fascinates
me: setting the objects on this memory of
light, they become part of an atmospheric
story. That is how I constructed Notturno
Laviani.”
What exactly is Notturno Laviani?
GV: “Notturno Laviani is an artistic
photography project created to celebrate
three decades of collaboration between
Ferruccio Laviani and Foscarini, based on
a particular idea of light. It is composed
of multiple episodes produced around
the lamps Laviani has designed over this
period of time. Each lamp is shown in two
images: indoors and outdoors. But the
narrative is not a matter of captions.
The lamps are not seen in their natural
habitat – the rooms of a home – but in
alien contexts, sharing a unique imaginary
of light. Not locations, but signifying
settings in which the distance between the
object and the context has been explored
GIANLUCA VASSALLO TALKS
ABOUT “NOTTURNO LAVIANI”.
052
Gianluca
Vassallo
precisely to multiply the meaning and to
stimulate new interpretations, where that
unique imaginary becomes the red thread
of the project.”
What is this imaginary of light?
GV: “There is a song – Una Notte In
Italia by Ivano Fossati – that with sounds
and words narrates a very particular light:
intimate and public at the same time.
A typically Italian light that is part of
collective memory, but is interpreted by
each of us in a personal way. In this sense,
this light is like a work of art, universal
and individual, open to the interpretations
of different gazes.”
How is this light connected to
Ferruccio Laviani and his work?
GV: “When I was asked to narrate
the 30 years of collaboration between
Foscarini and Laviani, I thought about
the man behind the designer: a public
persona who produces often exuberant
objects that inhabit the homes of many,
many people. But at the same time, he is a
deeply private individual, almost reticent
when he has to speak of what guides
his creative action. This dual spirit of
Ferruccio Laviani made me think about a
particular kind of light: the one I always
imagine when I listen to Fossati’s song.”
What do you mean by reticence?
GV: “When you talk with Ferruccio
Laviani you can perceive a sort of
difficulty in the application of language
to things, in bringing a gesture that is
instinctive for him into a rational space.
As he admits himself, what drives Laviani
is not so much the possibility of creating
the best possible light, but the need to
transfer part of his imagination into
the lives of others. And the operation is
deemed a success when the public takes
part in that imagination, through its own
interpretations.”
Isn’t that what artists do, to
some extent?
GV: “It is definitely what is done by
those who in their work want to bring
meaning into the lives of others, and to
create the possibility of conveying that
meaning in another form.
This way of being also involves awareness
and responsibility: the awareness that
anything that becomes part of our
everyday life has an impact on the quality
of life of the world. Laviani’s design is not
an act of vanity, but of necessity.
In this sense, perhaps it does closely
resemble art.”
What has Foscarini contributed
to this project?
GV: “As always, once the theme of the
project has been defined, Foscarini allows
me total independence in its development,
because the company understands the
value of an outlook that is left free to
expand. In this sense, in the total freedom
of interpretation and creation, Notturno
Laviani is a project that fully reflects
the spirit of the brand that has made it
possible.”
053
Notturno
Laviani
