Jelly Fish Project

in collaboration with "Fondazione March"

Technogel’s path in contemporary art began in 2001, when the company collaborated with British artist Rachel Whiteread, followed by Mariko Mori in 2003, Cracking Art Group in 2008, German artist Charlotte Mumm and the Japanese Akira Arita in 2009.

 

Also in 2009, Technogel Art Project opened the door to Jelly Fish, a visiting artists research curated by fondazione march. Each year after careful selection, fondazione march gives an International artist the opportunity to produce an artwork by using the firm’s unique gel in his or her own creative process.

Jelly Fish, named after the translucent and flexible material, intends to investigate through artistic means the qualities of the Technogel®. However, the project most of all opens a dialogue between the artists’ creative thinking and the firm’s more structured and specialized planning thus creating a rich exchange of inspiration and technique.

The intent of fin ondazione march is to create, together with Technogel, occasions to meet artists and involve them in innovative projects that both contribute to research as well as provide new ideas for the future. Artists, on the other hand, have the possibility to work with professionals who grant full artistic freedom allowing for the best creation of their works of art.
When Massimo Losio recounts his relationship with contemporary art, he speaks of a man-centered system of values and of a search for pureness.
Why art? In his vision, art is closer to truth than design, which in its very nature is linked to function, utility and consequently market. For him art is where the making is an inner need of expression and where artists represent a place still capable of analytical skills and great utopias.  
"Art in this company is an end in itself; artists’ authenticity highlights another existing and fundamental balance, the moral one", says Massimo Losio. Important is the encounter with art planning, which thinks outside the box and helps find that special something, unexpected and incredible, that lies inside the product. For example,  in Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow”: both the artist and the entrepreneur start with an initial idea that grows through the experimentation of materials, mistakes and unforeseen accidents that they find on their path, by situations determined from the very characteristics of the material itself.
It is the sense of chance, the idea that around the corner something may happen and change one’s life.
Jelly Fish presents the company as a tool, capable of inspiring freedom of thought and bringing into play the human being as fundamental and essential resource.

Silvia Ferri de Lazara

President fondazione march

 

Artworks

Technogel Art Project

Between art and science

Since 2001 Technogel® has sponsored an annual selection of young and rising artists, allowing them to independently express their creativity by developing an artwork made with Technogel. The continuous collaboration between artistic thinkers and Technogel® has led to the establishment of the Technogel® Art Project. The Technogel® Art Project, however, is not only an artistic collaboration, but it also  comes from a precise scientific interest.

Technogel® believes that artists, thanks to their outstanding imaginative and creative thinking, are able to discover new shapes and dimensions of design, applying the 3D properties of Technogel® to new concepts, techniques and industries. The results that emerge from the artists' creative work contribute to further develop the technological and innovative knowledge about Technogel, thus increasing its potentiality in industrial applications. Furthermore, prestigious international galleries have shown great interest in exhibiting artworks based on Technogel® technology, which allows the company to have a significant role in some of the most important creative venues around the world. Technogel® Art Project has so far supported, among others: Rachel Whiteread (2001), Mariko Mori (2003), the Cracking Art Group (2008), Charlotte Mumm (2009), and Akira Arita (2009).

 

Artworks

Untitled (Doorknob)

by Rachel Whiteread

As Adrian Searle accurately described on “The Guardian”: “Rachel Whiteread’s art is almost entirely concerned with the places where we live, and the places where we might also die. In the end, it all comes down to the empty room, the table and chair, the space under the stairs, the mattress and the bath, the light switch, keyhole and door knob, a life packed away in a cardboard box on a shelf”.

Cube I, Cube II, Cube III

by Akira Arita

In a sort of stackable puzzle of geometric shapes, Arita’s artworks show the gel’s qualities of permeability to light. The Japanese artist translates his geometrical painting – which already carries within the third dimension – into sculpture, interpreting cylinders, cones, cubes, pyramids and other objects, single or multiples, with no intention to symbolize or allude but to simply represent the very shapes. 

Talpa Be

by Charlotte Mumm

Technogel’s experimentation and conceptual research is reflected in the collaboration with German artist Charlotte Mumm and realization of her Talpa be. The mole is made in lead – therefore extremely heavy compared to its small physical proportions – and it lies on a hill of Technogel®, which deforms under the mole’s weight.

I want to tell you something about that

by Antonio Guiotto

The project moves, or tries to move, in balance within an invisible steadiness. I consider it as an invasive literary and sound experiment, which stimulates one sense only and tries and set your attention on meditation, suggestion.

You need to close your eyes, breath in and listen, totally similar a dynamic to when you seek inspiration to plan for something, to let yourself go and get where you need to arrive, as so it has to be.

This is the way I have seen and see some aspects of this project, how I have seen and see the company, what I would say to those who founded all this, how I have intended this type of collaboration which boundaries dilate inside and outside their work, the importance I remark in their experimentations, and how I have perceived each artist’s work, both as in method and work of art.

Press play, close your eyes, and enjoy your journey.

Audio tracks

  • Luca Trevisani

    Artist, gel, hair gel, sculpted hair, gel sculpture, gel piece, technological gel piece, jelly, ice cream, shoe laces, five thousand, a disc, walking, going far away, tying hands, staying still, transparency, fluorescence, rope, work, pulling, letting go, holding, suspending, a rotatory movement of the hand on a forelock of hair, remaining seated, waiting and sighing, admiring, speaking, asking, answering, writing, pulling a line, the first line of a plan, the exact moment in which the tip of a pen, a pencil, a chalk is put down on a sheet, a wooden piece, a note-book page, the exact moment in which a finger, with or without glove, is put down on the key of a computer, of the mouse, on the button of a machine that injects a gel that has been chosen for that precise function, 5+5, 5 words, 5 feelings, 5 concepts, 5+5 sounds that remind you of what you have made, and why you have made it, 5 seconds to unwrap a jelly candy, 5+ 5 seconds to look at it and eat it, knots, images, he does not seem happy, a puff, a problem to solve, maybe it works, sticky, a little the material, a little the humidity, Luca Trevisani, Untitled, or one hundred and four (104) in numbers, a code, a cataloguing, no, it’s the number of elements, 520, a boiling liquid, not water, the bubbles in the liquid, for 104 times, no only 104 bubbles, little bouncing balls, at least 3, then, pause, a fan and an iron, the sound we obtain when trying to make the little balls and the iron bounce while the fan spins, and then a pot, the same things and then you switch on a drill and while you record the sound both in the light and in the dark, in the end it’s the same, reflection, which mustn’t take long, poker cards, hands that make the cards slide, noise of an old lift, old Milan ladies chatting, white swans of Berlin, rubbing hands making fast friction palm to palm, hands on the chin, while cars dart in the provincial road to his right.

  • Michael Beutler

    It’s a white noise, it’s a pain in the abdomen, in the arms, in the legs, the more you wiggle, the more you get tangled up, it’s a metal spider web without spider, with thorns, it’s a bramble garden, it’s a garden of coiled briars, cold, it cuts and it pricks, it is the sense of fear of he who puts up the sign “PRIVATE PROPERTY”, all together, so much that he does not sleep at night, that he who puts up the sign has strange dreams, like for example: someone stealing his property. Because in that property, which is private, he thinks there is a treasure, the treasure is the property, he is afraid, he does not sleep at night, does not sleep very well, sleeps little. In the morning the same thoughts of yesterday, ugly thoughts, thoughts of somebody who steals something. Then there’s the other, beyond that bramble garden of coiled metal, that the more you move the more you remain entangled, he drops the rubber, a hard gel protecting that razor wire, protecting the property, that continues being private, but he who has placed the sign now sleeps calm, now sleeps, has beautiful dreams, and in the morning when he wakes up he has new thoughts, maybe he will remove the sign, maybe he will open the doors and the gate, if someone decides to pop by for a visit. Private property, no, it’s a joke…

  • Collaboration

    Work in a team, take the common good towards an univocal direction, but not only that, know how to listen, know how to read the people, say, mediate, decide, choose, have the intuition that on a wrong day time has a different relation from the rest of the days, succeed in picking the essence and talent of every individual. For everyone a common quality, to sense and grasp, to be able to say no, to be able to say, to be able to express ourselves with means that are personal, to be able to pick that way of expressing ourselves, method, order, a bit of madness, to be able to look far away, to be able to wait, to be able to exceed a limit and create a new one to exceed and so on. Ability to solve problems, predisposition, baggage, experience, confidence and friendship, past in the pockets, memories, optimism, arguments, crash, encounter, need, necessity, preparation, do things others don’t have the courage to do, to go against everyone, to say “stop”, to say “finally”, to tell the truth, not say “I told you”, anticipate, run, think, meditate, work, dream, open the eyes, both ours and others’, to sigh in relief, to be afraid, to be worried, to hold, not to change idea, change idea, change direction, remain, skip, delegate, reward, to pardon, to punish, clean, whisper, cry, laugh and get angry, bark, dazzle, fall, to raise ourselves and dust it off, to stand in front of all and say something important, participate, listen, follow, eat, gratify.

  • Experimentation

    Try, try and try again, until we obtain a result, it’s that we don’t know what we are looking for, maybe we have something in mind. Doors are opened, it’s the miracles that attend us, too many to count. A collection of errors is worth as much as the successes, we can be mistaken, we can improve, because we know that, if not tomorrow perhaps the day after, we will find a solution. Sometimes we look for something and we find something else instead, this is not a miracle but it’s near to a miracle, it’s a goal, because some things arrive at night, when we are sleeping, when we are dreaming, and then in the morning, before scratching our head which feels a little numb, that intuition arrives, an outline, an image, like scientific and technological shamans we open our mind and we let it all in, we’ll make a choice later on. We don’t speak about failures, at least not all of them, because we know that sometimes to take the wrong road, just because we have misread the map or not trusted the gps, is to find ourselves by chance in front of a bistro, a bar, a public square, to meet someone that has changed our life. If you don’t experience it in life, if you don’t accept the unexpected, you miss out the pleasure to do things. You lose the pleasure to do things, you lose the pleasure to do things, you lose pleasure, you lose things, you lose stuff.

  • Factory

    The color yellow is in tune with the galvanizing and the sky-blue. Galvanized tubes, turbines and propellers. A fan, another fan! The spin is a movement, the spin is sure noise. Motors that inject a liquid in a mould. The mould was created for a precise shape. Every shape is precise. A technological gel. The gel is injected in the shape, to create other equal shapes. Equal shapes to create a unique shape. A hammer goes bang, a forklift truck, another noise of hammer, closer. People who pass by, people who talk. Something green, the heat, a carousel. Someone works, someone speaks of work. A puff. A hiss. The floor is concrete. The forklift truck silently rolls on the concrete. Outside nature, inside the machineries make noise. Soft and sticky, soft to sleep, to dream, to think, to rest and have new thoughts. Neon lights make a cold light! Meanwhile, the gel continues being sticky. A squirt, a compressor, nylon as to not make hands stick. Careful, precise hands separate different materials. New shapes, different from yesterday’s shapes, different from tomorrow’s. Another dream, a rest, and tomorrow still new thoughts.

  • Michael Fliri

    The force of gravity that always wins, at least on Earth, the force of gravity was discovered by Newton, and before him? Everything up in the air? No, it has always existed, he has discovered, not invented it. There is a giant face, maybe of a giant, maybe a mask to hide that we are sad, maybe a large mask for many small faces, maybe a large mask for a large face, which anyhow sleeps safe and sound, or so it seems. Therefore, behind the mask a face, or in front of the face a dripping mask, which used to be soft and then became solid, and there are no precise calculations, it happened a little by chance, a little thanks to someone’s wish, a little for the type of material, but at a certain point he said STOP! And so that force of gravity that was uncovered by Newton is another component of this recipe, no mould, only a shape, a form of face as base, maybe again the face of a giant, let’s hope a good giant, let’s hope that it aids protect something that’s worth being protected, an idea, a thought, an important plan. If you touch it, it oscillates. 1st the supports 2nd a pole 3rd a face 4th the dripping gel 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th: the time, the force of gravity, the artist who says “stop”, the astonishment of those assisting, the time the gel becomes solid, and chance. Nothing else.

  • Something different

    Beyond the hunger, beyond every expectation, there is like a road that is not marked, almost invisible, but it calls you, and you know that despite the brambles and the tall weeds, despite the sharp pebbles that will crack the shoes, tearing the soles, cracking the ankles, trained ankles however because accustomed to paying attention and to risk in similar yet always different roads. Nonetheless, you are and always will be attracted by those roads, maybe now only from this one, because it will always be one single road at a time that you will have to cover, but you will do it, and you don’t know precisely, or better, you can’t explain it in a way that can satisfy other people. Someone could risk theories that regard something genetic, like a sort of predisposition; some were born warriors, some were born parasites, some want adventure and the unexpected to feel alive, for fear of deluding themselves, because Nature calls, because that’s the way it is. And so you follow that road, or you will repent for the rest of your life, and always for the very reason that all the roads that are barely marked will always be different. And it’s not important if then someone will follow the line of grass which wound down under your every step, it’s not important if, after you, someone will boast of what you were the first to risk, leave him to it, let him enjoy his lie, because you know deep in your heart that you have made it for something else that others don’t understand, but that will improve them somehow. There is a fire, there is that same magnetic substance that is present in the beaks of the pigeons, of the ducks and those who migrate, it’s this substance in the blood, with the fire and all the rest, and this makes you a pioneer, this means you are able to break away, and makes everything possible. We deserve also to be wrong, we deserve also to fail, to pile up hard work and errors to understand a little more, having the exact feeling that every other man could be similar to you and help you reach that exact point, but always a step at a time, or a leap at a time. That’s the way I see it, that’s the way you see it, and you know we are made of the same substance, you know that despite everything, every door is a different room, every echo bounces in different way and every day will be different, because we want it and we make it so.