RE – VERSAL
From May 9 to June 7, 2025
Fondazione Luciana Matalon
Free entrance
From May 9 to June 7, the Fondazione Luciana Matalon hosts RE-VERSAL, a solo exhibition by Franco Marabelli, a multifaceted figure in the Italian artistic and design landscape. With this exhibition, he presents the public with a dense and layered narrative, suspended between creative autobiography and ecological urgency.
Not merely a retrospective, but a journey—an “inversion of course,” as the title suggests—capable of engaging the viewer in reflecting on the destiny of humankind and the planet. RE-VERSAL unfolds as a sum of languages and memories: previously unseen works, a precious art book featuring a critical text by Stefano Pizzi, and an exhibition setup that serves as both play and warning, intimate reflection and ethical manifesto.
Marabelli—designer, scenographer, artist—roots his research in the totalizing experience of the 1970s, when Elio Fiorucci, visionary entrepreneur and early advocate of animal rights, invited him to design his legendary boutiques. From Milan to New York, Marabelli became a key player in an unrepeatable era, a crossroads of aesthetics, fashion, and languages, alongside figures such as Warhol, Basquiat, Capote, Klaus Nomi, Grace Jones, Colette, Kenny Scharf. This effervescent universe of relationships and creative contamination continues to shape his design philosophy, driven by mobility, hybridization, and the energy of transformation.
An artist of many faces and worlds, Marabelli today stands as a sharp voice of collective urgency—a muted yet unavoidable cry of the planet. His exhibition, structured in three sections, takes the form of a reflection on interdependence, an aesthetic gesture turned ethical action.
The first section is dedicated to the symbolism of numbers: an interactive installation that gathers the birthdates of friends, colleagues, and figures from the global creative scene, inviting them to “participate” in symbolic form. Numbers, in their apparent neutrality, become icons of identity, a reminder of time passing but also an invisible web of relationships.
The second section turns into a cry and a protest: deforestation, extinction, environmental contamination. Collages, paintings, engravings, installations that provoke questions, awaken consciences, and call for action. Marabelli does not seek consolation—his is a poetics unafraid of rawness, one that speaks even through humble materials, transforming matter into narrative and responsibility.
The exhibition concludes with a true retrospective, spanning 1960 to the present, retracing the milestones of an entire career. Artworks, furnishings, design objects—including the iconic Mia armchair for B&B Italia and a pioneering lamp collection crafted from repurposed materials—photographs, sketches, fragments. All contribute to defining the profound signature of an artist who has never separated form and content, thought and action.
RE-VERSAL, therefore, is not just an exhibition, but a narrative device, an experiential environment where art becomes conscience and conscience becomes matter. Marabelli, with his style blending irony, pop art, and meticulous design, reminds us that art’s mission is to reach the heart, break down barriers, and generate emotion and thought.
As he himself states: “Art has a unique power: it reaches people’s hearts directly, overcoming linguistic and intellectual barriers; it can evoke profound emotions and stimulate reflections that a thousand words cannot convey.”
A special thanks to the organizations LIPU, ANIMAL EQUALITY, LAV, WORLDRISE, ALIMENTA L’AMORE, and MAIMERI, suppliers of colors and paints for the fine arts.
info & contacts
Luciana Matalon Foundation
+39 02 878781
[email protected]
www.fondazionematalon.org
opening hours
May 9 – June 7, 2025
10:00 – 13:00 | 14:00 – 19:00
Free admission
