This fifth edition continues the journey inside the ancient city walls dedicated to the discovery of a selection of projects and places, sometimes inaccessible, all to be discovered.
Grieder Contemporary gallery / Borgovico 33. As part of the Moving Stills series, the exhibition Tenderly encapsulates much of Sachs’ enduring artistic interests in materiality and recontextualizing domestic objects to reveal their mysterious alter ego, all the while announcing a new departure in his photographic work. As often in the artist’s work, the exhibition’s title, ‘Tenderly’ has a double entendre. It expresses Sachs’ overarching artistic interest in making ‘arts emotionnels instead of arts decoratifs’, while also revealing his desire to experiment with the archetype of the natura morta. Keen on incorporating chance and haphazardness in the way he uses his light sources and moves his camera, resulting in unusual visual effects, Sachs finds freedom in letting things fall under the agency of chance, finding the perfect balance between ‘faire et laisser faire’. Often playing with antithetical notions in his titles, in this series the friction between movement and stillness harks back to Sachs’ interest in creating a compelling tension between different concepts or materials.
Grieder Contemporary gallery
Como, via Borgovico 33
16-24 September - 11am-6pm
Opening 16 September - 11am-6pm
Artist's Talk 16 September - 3.30 pm
Christoph Doswald in conversation with Rolf Sachs
When Nature Blooms / Casa Bianca. On the occasion of Lake Como Design Festival, FENIX® and Arpa® present the Returning to Villa Casa Bianca in which visitors are invited to discover a fascinating villa on Lake Como, built in the mid-1920s in Art Déco style, that has been closed for a long time. Until December 2023, the project shows clients, architects and designers the features and creative solutions offered by the materials of the Broadview Group's brands. The site-specific set-up is signed by the Dutch duo Van Beek & Dings, and enriched with the installation When Nature Blooms. Created by the florist and flower stylist Letizia dei Fiori, it proposes a reflection on the relationship between nature and human beings.
Casa Bianca
Como, Lungo Lario Trento 47
16-24 September - 10am-7pm
FIBRA RESEARCH, Adriana Fortunato, Caterina Fumagalli
De Curiositas / Galleria Ramo. The exhibition spaces of Galleria Ramo host an exhibition curated by Arch. Benedetta De Rosa entitled De Curiositas, an opportunity to get to know in depth the working method of designers, their point of view and their gaze on the world and on things. The aim is to investigate the aspects that led to the final result, the feelings, the contaminations, the technical needs and the poetics behind each gesture. An open dialogue with history and the city to which involves four Italian creative talents: Naessi, a multidisciplinary creative studio based in Rome, Fibra Research, an Italian duo devoted to textile design without constraints, Sofia Albrigo, a graduate of the Academy of Mendrisio who conceives architecture as an appropriate act that questions conventions, and Riccardo Amarri, currently based in Basel and engaged in independent projects in the fields of architecture, product design and research.
Galleria Ramo
Como, via Gerolamo Borsieri 4D
16-24 September - 11am-6.30pm
Opening 16 September - from 5pm
Contemplazioni, Margot Errante
Corrispondenze. Within the framework of the fifth edition of the Lake Como Design Festival, Wonderlake Como inaugurates a new project dedicated to the collection, in the form of a photographic archive, of different contributions dedicated to Lake Como, its natural wonders, its history, and its architectural, artistic and cultural heritage. The theme chosen for the first appointment of Corrispondenze, curated by Laura Petronella, revolves around the mountains of Lake Como, narrated through color, black and white and still life images. Bringing together the different points of view of national photographers – Andrea Butti, Davide Bordogna, Davide Lovatti, Margot Errante, Nicola Biagetti and Mattia Vacca -, Corrispondenze takes the form of a photographic journey of discovery of the true essence of this territory.
WIP Studio
Como, via Volta 24
16-24 September
10am-1pm, 2pm-7pm
Opening 16 September
from 6.30pm
Paesaggi Bianchi, Patrizia Cassina
Paesaggi Bianchi / DEP design store. Patrizia Cassina welcomes and accompanies the public on an unexplored journey through a series of works of landscapes rarefied by the geometry of color that dissolve into white. The almost hidden horizon slowly emerges from the pictorial surface until it too gets lost into a soft white. Patrizia Cassina is a Como-based artist with a fashion career history, who has always placed color at the center of her artistic research. First applied to textile design, then in her painting practice where her careful chromatic research expands and finds decisive balance. Inside the different rooms of the dep design store, Doriana De Petris, in collaboration with Somma1867, has created an evocative installation focused on three different chromatic variations, the fil-rouge of the exhibition.
DEP design store
Como, via Carcano 4
16-24 September - 11am-7pm
Monday 3-7pm
Historia Naturalis Pubblicitaria / Nosetta. Inside its shop in the historic center of Como, Nosetta presents Historia Naturalis Pubblicitaria, a suggestive collection of advertising messages adorned with illustrations of animals in collaboration with Paola Mazza's Historical Advertising Archive. The intersection of art, design and natural history is a fascinating interweaving that has crept through the pages of human creativity. In the ads, visitors will embark on an entertaining intellectual journey exploring the parallel evolution of animals from the early 1900s to the arrival of television, from symbols and metaphors of human qualities to more complex beings as friends and companions, admiring the creativity of iconic designers, including the brilliant works of Marcello Dudovich, Alfredo Busi and Armando Testa. Discovering the eternal attraction of animals in advertisements, beautifully brought to life by the creativity of famous illustrations in an environment guided by the ethics of Lake Como fabrics, becomes a sustainable and responsible tribute to the beauty of nature.
NOSETTA
Como, via Vitani 19
16-24 September - 10am-7pm
Tassonomie Leggere / Portici del Broletto. The Lake Como Design Festival has asked NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, to devise an installation to introduce this year’s edition theme: Naturalis Historia. On this spur, a workgroup led by NABA lecturer Paolo Giacomazzi was created, an “offshore” of this Exhibition Design Lab of the Master of Arts in Interior Design. Teh project outcome is a Munari-inspired machine that becomes useful to describe zoology, botany and mineralogy, like a suspended compendium. A moving encyclopedia, incessantly twirling to adjust to its own etymology: from Greek “enkýklios paideîa”, “circular education”, that is “completed”. Tassonomie Leggere (Light Taxonomies) is a tribute to the knowledge around us, the intangible knowng that floats among the columns of Como’s Broletto brushing against us.
Tassonomie Leggere
Portico del Broletto
Como, piazza Duomo
Atelier Fabrizio Musa. Artist Fabrizio Musa's atelier in Como was once the home and studio of Giuseppe Terragni. The atelier will be open to visitors during the fifth edition of the Lake Como Design Festival. Since his artistic debut in the second half of the 1990s, Fabrizio Musa has contaminated more traditional painting techniques with new technologies.
Atelier Fabrizio Musa
Como, via Indipendenza 55
16-24 September - 3-7pm