Moncler Taking Over Milan’s Centrale Station With Exhibition
This is the first time the station will be transformed into an expansive public art space.
MILAN — Moncler is taking over Milan's main Centrale railway station with a large-scale public exhibition dubbed “An Invitation to Dream.”
“Dreams are what have been moving myself and Moncler forward since Day One, because we never stop dreaming about what is possible, and how we can inspire and be inspired by others around the world,” said Remo Ruffini, chairman and chief executive officer of Moncler.
The immersive exhibition is curated by Jefferson Hack, filmed and photographed by Jack Davison and will run during Milan Design Week, from April 15 to 21. Hack's Dazed Media publishes AnOther Magazine, Dazed, and Nowness. The London-based Davison has in the past worked with Craig Green, who has over the years been a Moncler Genius designer, and Bally.
The project asked creative minds “to inspire us, or even help us, to dream like them,” stated Moncler.
In addition to Ruffini himself, the exhibition will feature Daniel Arsham, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Isamaya Ffrench, Laila Gohar, Jeremy O. Harris, Francesca Hayward, Julianknxx, Ruth Rogers, Rina Sawayama, Sumayya Vally and Zaya.
“The curated community represent some of the finest creative visionaries across culture who dare to dream for us,” said Hack. “They are today's reality-shapers and they were invited to participate as their work carries with it new hopes and possibilities. It's the deeply transformative aspects in their work and practice that makes them essential artists of our time and essential for us to bring into this project.”
The city's landmark station, where an average of 300,000 people converge every day, symbolizes “the pursuit of new dreams and the journey of turning them into reality,” said Moncler. This is the first time the station will be transformed into an expansive public art space.
All the billboard and screen-based advertising sites in the train station “will be re-wired to create a Dreamscape: a new landscape of images and quotations from our visionaries, where large-scale text pieces and slow-motion portraits soar above the noise of the station as powerful, silent invocations, inspiring the public to dream,” explained Moncler.
The exhibition of hand-printed lithographic prints by Davison “grounds the experience, with the idea of slowing down time, capturing intimacy and conveying the humanity of the subject — all instrumental in setting the intention of this project.”
Following the exhibition in Milan, Moncler will extend “An Invitation to Dream” as part of a global summer campaign.
Moncler in February 2019 staged a Genius presentation in a storied site linked to the station, at Magazzini Raccordati on Milan's Via Ferrante Aporti 9, marked by a series of warehouses and tunnels that connect different train tracks and platforms.
The designers at the time ranged from Green, Richard Quinn and Matthew Williams to Pierpaolo Piccioli, Hiroshi Fujiwara and Palm Angels‘ Francesco Ragazzi, among others.