Space: Neutro, Reggio Emilia, IT
Year: 2025
Photo: Giacomo Bianco
Text: Cosimo Bizzarri
To break free from the tyranny of function, at any cost.
Display windows usually stage objects: they rest on supports that show them, hold them, and give them a place.
Massimo Carico, the project by ZAVEN presented in NEUTRO’s showcases, shifts the focus precisely onto these supports, transforming what normally sustains objects into the very subject of the exhibition. It invites the public to rethink the relationship between use and meaning, between function and imagination. The exhibition explores the possibilities of one of the most common objects: the shelf.
A minimal, seemingly unambitious element that, in our homes, serves the primary task of holding things up. From this basic function arises a reflection on the relationship between form, material, and the identity of objects, and on the idea that even the simplest element can contain narrative, emotional, and design potential.
The supporting surface is no longer “flat, rectangular, clinging to the wall with nails or battens, and dutifully doing its job,” as Cosimo Bizzarri writes in the publication accompanying the show. Freed from its role, the shelf becomes a constellation of small landscapes.
Suspended between weight and lightness, twenty-three shelves—each different in shape, size, and material—are structures conceived not only to host objects but also to question their own role as silent presences within space. Every device stems from research, from drawing, and from a construction process in which ZAVEN intervenes personally.
The title Massimo Carico plays on a double register: it evokes a proper name, as if the shelves, once anonymous, were acquiring an identity, but it also refersto the load-bearing limit of each object—the point at which material meets its threshold.
Completing the project is a publication featuring photographs by Giacomo Bianco and a text by Cosimo Bizzarri, expanding the reflection and illustrating the dialogue between form and narrative.
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