Title of the Work:

Kaleidoscope

Created for the 13th Triennale di Milano.

After passing through the eight ducts on the Grand Staircase and the Caption Corridor, one enters the Kaleidoscope. The parallelepiped space of the Triennale’s Hall of Honor, entirely painted black, contained two large silver triangular prisms, inverted relative to each other.

The walls of the prism were completely covered in mirrors. While the two ends, reflecting each other, multiplied the interior infinitely in a longitudinal direction, the side walls created the illusion of being inside a huge hexagonal prism, 18 meters tall.

On the white floor of the hall, two films directed by Tinto Brass were projected and simultaneously reflected six times in the mirrors. One film focused on leisure time, the other on working time. The 9-minute films were composed of collages of archival footage. A special editing technique allowed, on one hand, for the two themes to be rhythmically synchronized, and on the other, for multiple episodes to unfold simultaneously within the same film, resulting in a complex series of transitions and intersections between different moments of the narrative.

The viewer saw themselves projected six times on the mirrored walls, in the middle of the cinematic screen — both a participant and physically immersed in the spectacle. In some way, one ended up feeling distorted and powerless, confronted with everything that had been so optimistically promised in the first room. At the end of the film, a soundtrack composed by Nanni Balestrini and a series of colorful collages by painter Achille Perilli overtook the scene in 24 different combinations, like a kind of accumulation of the final wreckage of our consumed free time.

At the end, a voice announced the conclusion of the screening.

Technical Specifications:

• 13th Triennale di Milano, 1964
• 24 x 18 cm
• Silver bromide gelatin/photographic paper
• Courtesy of Triennale Milano

This work was donated by Triennale Milano.

For this charitable initiative, Memorabid is responsible for collecting pre-auction bids.

The final closing of the lot will take place during the event on Monday, November 3rd, at 6:30 PM in the Salone d'Onore at Triennale Milano.

At the end of the pre-auction, the highest bid received for each lot will constitute the starting bid for the in-person event. If there are no further bids, the pre-auction winner will definitively win the lot.

Pre-auction winners will receive an email inviting them to raise a maximum bid, which will be carried forward to the auction on November 3rd to protect the interests of the online pre-auction participant.

Winners of the online pre-auction will also be offered the opportunity to defend their bid by participating remotely at the November 3rd event, via the telephone auction mechanism directly through the CAF Association.