The cross as a symbol that pervades everyday life. There are 27 crosses that are the protagonists of Giulio Iacchetti’s research project on display until July 7 at the Castello Carlo V in Lecce. Crosses obtained through formal and material elaborations, from silver to wrought iron, from tubular steel to blown glass and carbon fiber, but also reworkings of everyday objects, from a key to a brick, from an electric track for toy cars to a mattress. In addition to the religious aspect, for Iacchetti this exhibition represents a starting point to explore the meaning that is attributed to symbolism in Western culture and the value attributed to it.
“Crucial – 27 crosses”, curated by the designers and design teachers Stephanie Galante and Rosaria Copeta is the synthesis of a ten-year research by Iacchetti, still ongoing. A set of objects placed in dialogue with the city in which the cross is investigated in its formal and design potential. If it is true as it is true that design is distinguished by its ability to say something elseIacchetti demonstrates how contemporary design does not only respond to functional needs but can also stimulate thought, arouse reactions, feelings and emotions. It is no coincidence that the twenty-seventh crossbe it asite specific installation conceived specifically for the Lecce exhibition. It is characterized by a formal synthesis that, in its conception, demonstrates Giulio Iacchetti’s ability to create objects that contain multiple meanings.
With its essential form devoid of any type of adjective, the stone material and the presence of the apical device that recall the crosses of war cemeteries, the number 27 is a slap in the face for its meaning. The screw at the base, a term that is not coincidentally the plural of life, in the opposite position to the cross, seems to recall the dualism of human existence. And again, at the same time, the proof of the transformation of rotary motion into linear and vice versa, that apparently turning on itself, in reality, advancing, overcoming the resistance of the materials.
Iacchetti’s is a objects with poetic reaction whose meaning is “in knowing how to listen before imposing, in measuring the gesture that transforms and creates, adapting it to the design context, in gently forcing rather than forcing a material to serve an abstract idea, in order to generate not only the performance of functions, but also and above all emotions” (Iacchetti, Ragni, 2003).
