© Francesco Vezzoli, Natalie, with Vezzoli's mother's eyes Courtesy of Prada's 24 Hour Museum

Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli’s latest media ploy has been to design a pop-up museum, open for 24 hours, in collaboration with Prada and AMO, Rem Koolhaas’ think tank in Paris’ Palais d’Iéna. The temporary event will welcome the public in to the traditionally historic building for a night of magic, like a Cinderella’s ball, before it is dismantled the next day.

The theatrical premiere is organized into three event spaces, historic, contemporary and the forgotten, the first being a showcase of Vezzoli’s works enclosed in neon-lit metal cages on the ground floor of the building. Vezzoli poses his portraits of Hollywood divas in the style of classical Greco-Roman sculptures on marble pedestals – the sculptures wear masks with Vezzoli’s mother’s eyes. With these works, Vezzoli continues his exploration of red-carpet rituals of celebrity and stardom that will be further exploited with a party staged in conjunction with the event, and which will be live streamed on the internet. Also, on Facebook, the artist intends to have an interactive game in which he frames people’s faces in classical composites.

© Francesco Vezzoli, Cate Courtesy of Prada's 24 Hour Museum

© Francesco Vezzoli, Eva with Vezzoli's mother's eyes for Prada's 24 Hour Museum,

Vezzoli’s previous performance-events included a live tribute to Diaghilev he did with Lady Gaga and Frank Gehry at LA’s MOCA entitled Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again) 2009, and the Democrazy video with Sharon Stone and Bernard-Henri Lévy playing characters in a ficitional political campaign for Venice Biennale in 2007. Prada has also previously collaborated with artist Carsten Holler for the The Double Club, a pop up club in London in 2009.

More information:
24 h Museum – 24 – 25 January 2012
Palais d’Iéna, ADDRESS: 9, PLACE D’IÉNA, 75016 PARIS
TUESDAY 24 JANUARY 2012- WEDNESDAY 25 JANUARY 2012, 7.00 am – 8.30 pm
www.24hoursmuseum.com

PRADA CATWALK MAN SS 2012, ITALY, MILAN, 2011 By OMA / Agostino Osio © All rights reserved

Prada collaborated with Rem Koolhaas‘ OMA design studio to create a show space for its men’s Spring/Summer 2012 catwalk show at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

OMA organized rows of blue foam cubes in a 1.5 x 1.5 spatial grid spread across the hall for the audience to sit on while models zigzagged between them creating more engagement and visibility then the usual linear catwalks.

PRADA CATWALK MAN SS 2012, ITALY, MILAN, 2011 By OMA / Agostino Osio © All rights reserved

Each person sits on a block creating a more confrontational interaction between model and spectator. “Each guest becomes a challenge for the new fashion; each confrontation becomes highly personal…” says OMA’s designers. Astro-turf grass covered the floor, and stadium-lighting gave it a outdoors/picnic feel.

Prada also recently opened its new palazzo at Fondazione Prada in Venice where it houses a rotating collection of contemporary art.

http://www.oma.eu/

http://www.prada.com/

Carsten Höller's Soma exhibit in Berlin

By Kiša Lala

Carsten Höller’s new exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, ‘Soma’ examines the mythic traditions of this Vedic elixir. Though the recipe and ingredients for it have been lost, ethnomycologists and artists alike have been interpreting its origin through ancient manuscripts – from such sources as the verses of the Rigveda, an ancient North Indian text from the 2nd millennium BCE: ‘We have drunk of the soma; we have become immortal, we have seen the light; we have found the Gods.’

Carsten Höller’s exhibit on Soma 2010

The libation that promised enlightenment and divine knowledge, some believe, may have come from the fly Amanita mushroom (Amanita muscaria), which also happens to be the natural diet of reindeers (and consequently can be derived from reindeer urine), is herded by ancient nomadic tribes of central Asia, and also the source of myths and indirect allusions in tales like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Hamburger Bahnhof, one of my favourite museums (which also has excellent exhibits of Joseph Beuys’ works), is dividing the space along its main axis into two halves to display Höller’s work – each enclosure populated by living creatures such as reindeers, canaries, eight mice and two flies – with one half hypothetically under the influence of soma, and the other unaffected, so as ‘to enact a comparative study between the normal world and the realm of soma.’ We are left to contemplate which of the animals betray the influence of soma in their behaviour.

In the middle of Höller’s extraordinary exhibit is a ‘floating hotel room’ on a mushroom-like platform, giving more adventurous visitors a chance to fully immerse themselves in the experience of soma by spending the night in the museum. There is also a publication from Hatje Cantz accompanying the exhibition of Höller’s works, which explores the written research on soma.

Installationsansicht Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 2010 © VG Bild-Kunst 2010 / Carsten Höller, Foto: Attilio Maranzano

Book cover of catalogue for Carsten Höller show: SOMA Documents

Mushrooms pop up quite bit in Höller’s past work. His art typically confronts our sense of the ordinary with whimsy, interrupting habitual pathways with the unexpected. He created Test Site (2006) for the Tate Modern’s Unilever Series, with sculptural slides that explored various aspects of the act of sliding. And in 2008 in London he opened The Double Club, a pop-up night club sponsored by the Prada Foundation, which had a dance floor and restaurant that melded Congolese culture with the western experience of nightlife.

Carsten Höller: soma Hamburger Bahnhof image©designboom

Carsten Höller, Soma at the Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof from 5 November 2010 – 6 February 2011
Video: Click here