Archivio Massimo
Galleria Massimo Minini, 2023
Archivio Massimo is the result of an invitation as unusual as it was exceptional: to develop a body of work by reacting freely to the gallerist Massimo Minini's private archive. Formafantasma has thus developed a work that conceives the archive as a stratified and complex deposit of memory. The practice of archiving is therefore seen as a tool for transforming one’s life and work experiences into material fragments that are tangible and consultable, and not subject to the passage of time. The objects designed by Formafantasma are not conceived for a systematic reorganization of the archival material or to provide greater accessibility to Massimo Minini's peculiar way of categorizing the documents he has collected over a lifetime. They are instead conceived as devices that celebrate the archivist, in addition to that which is archived.
All the pieces refer to the personal and rigorous – yet also playful and intuitive – way in which Massimo Minini has collected and preserved diverse materials (invitations to exhibitions, publications, photographic material, correspondence with artists and much more) that tell the story of an extraordinary life and a pantagruelian curiosity.
The objects, made with the 'conservation materials', stainless steel and glass, are composed along with surfaces in printed silk designed for the display of archival materials.
The objects, made with the 'conservation materials', stainless steel and glass, are composed along with surfaces in printed silk designed for the display of archival materials.
Archive Massimo is a reflection on the idea of memory, the resilience of the past and the practice of the collector and archiving as processes of intellectual selfpollination. Developing a way of thinking and an understanding of oneself and of the world through the practice of archiving are interpreted as one of the many forms of eroticism of the mind which is nothing more than the pleasure of indulging in one's thoughts and in the generation of ideas starting from what exists and its categorization. The work, by relating human archiving systems to those of biology for preserving memory and the past, alludes to the universal desire to exist beyond time and in relation to the other-than-self, activating inventive survival strategies made of patience and Love.
The documents, letters, photos, personal objects of the gallerist thus enter into dialogue with the monochrome print of the Ophrys apifera, preserved in the form of an herbarium. This flower, commonly called the bee orchid, is found in many European countries, in North Africa and in the Middle East, and is known for its evolutionary and survival strategies which have led it to simulate, in the center of its petals, the appearance of the reproductive organs of a bee, now extinct in most countries where the flower is endemic. The evolutionary purpose of this feature is to attract male insects which, by copulating with the flower, become involuntary participants in the distribution of the pollen. In this way the flower becomes the biological archive of a dissipating present, and, at the same time, of the inexhaustible ability to imagine oneself in constant transformation: today Ophyrs apifera reproduces in total solitude.
