We are happy to announce the exhibition Ho visto un re (The King And I), curated by Fantom co-founder Massimo Torrigiani and Davide Quadrio, commissioned and produced by Alcantara with the Municipality of Milan and Palazzo Reale.

The show will take place in the rooms of the Apartment of the Prince from September 20th to October 23rd at Milan’s Royal Palace (Palazzo Reale) in Piazza Duomo.

Alcantara, the company that produces and markets the eponymous registered material worldwide, presents a contemporary take on the atmosphere of a space full of historical connotations, with a project conceived to engage and amaze.
The King and I presents works created specifically by nine international artists active in different fields:  Maurizio Anzeri, Arthur Arbesser, Paola Besana, Gentucca Bini, Matthew Herbert, Taisuke Koyama, Francesco Simeti, Adrian Wong & Shane Aspegren.

This encounter between art, design, sound and theatre creates an experimental path around the Alcantara® material and the venue where the exhibition happens. The artists contributed to a collective narrative that comes from the imagery of fairy tales: kings, queens, princes and princesses, frogs and labyrinths, which journey through the flight of our imagination and their stories. The strands of this multi-faceted exhibition dialogue with the apartment’s architecture and decor, in a lively play of references and superimpositions, guided by the curators.

An Alcantara-specific and site-specific project, two tracks of thought that have engaged the artists and us in careful and playful reflection, thanks to an original commission and a different way of interacting with a space like the Apartment of the Prince. Rather than considering it a ‘window’ or ‘set’, we conceived it as ‘spirit’ and ‘place’. A starting point that stimulated everyone to reinvent the space and the material in ways that we at first found surprising.   Massimo Torrigiani

Palazzo Reale offers to the public a selection of original large scale works designed for its rooms. Sculptures, photographs, clothes, installations and performances dialogue with the Apartment of the Prince in a continuous reinvention.
The Italian title of the exhibition, Ho visto un re, aims straight at the heart of Milan, quoting the famous song written by Dario Fo and made famous by Enzo Jannacci in 1968. With its easy-going rhythm, the song is an ironic stance against the arrogance of the powerful. A spirit that in the show, with art and the same fairy-tale charm of the song, reappropriates a space that was once for the few, giving it back to everyone for free and in contemporary garb.

This rarely inhabited dwelling, together with the opportunity the artists had to meet and be together, talk and work deeply with the material, have been a source of inspiration for everyone. This has given rise to combinations, overlaps and partnerships, freeing an all-new imagination, a healthy and irreverent creativity.   Davide Quadrio

Alcantara® is a versatile material, with a wide range of uses, from the car industry to fashion, which here fully takes its place in contemporary art with a kaleidoscopic exhibition, where it is clear that the artists had fun exploring an innovative medium. The result is a playful and surprising exhibition that travels on the tracks of their imagination. Alcantara thus becomes the protagonist of a modern fairy-tale that takes visitors through the rooms of one of the most famous buildings in Milan, shaping a creative vision full of surprises.

Ho visto un re (The King and I)  
From September 20 to October 23, 2016 
Apartment of the Prince, Palazzo Reale 
Piazza Duomo 12, Milan 
www.palazzorealemilano.it
www.alcantara.com