Transformers

We are immersed in a reality that is constantly transforming: new technologies and the relationship between digital and individual create a universe in which the subject must constantly adapt and change to the surroundings in order to understand the world and express itself.

Transformers, the book which accompanies the exhibition of the same name that connects art and design at the MAXXI in Rome, fits into this logic. Through their work, four artists from four different countries and different realities express their views on contemporary mutability, a theme that is declined variously as fluidity, harmony and chaos. Choi Jeong Hwa, Martino Gamper, Pedro Reyes and Didier Fiuza Faustino are, in some way, “transformers”: weapons become musical instruments played by an orchestra, chairs are made from handmade fabrics, in a journey in which the public is an active and stimulated subject, experiencing the exhibition spaces in different way.

Edited by Hou Hanru and Anne Palopoli, the book illustrates the projects through texts and critical contributions in Italian and English, to lead the reader/viewer towards the artists’ analytical processes of transformation. The graphic design of Transformers reflects the thematic content: the dust jackets, in four different versions dedicated to each of the artists, turn into posters, the physical object transforms and becomes usable, much like those Japanese robots that were so prevalent in the 1980s, underlining once more the changing character of contemporary reality.