Supersurfacespace - Exhibition Gallery - Moscow, Russia

By Alex Boschetti - 21 April 2015

In his famous autobiography “The Dance of Reality”, Alejandro Jodorowsky tells an ancient Chinese story about a huge mountain and a small village built at its feet. The mountain was so great that the sun never shone on the village. As a result, the village children suffered from rickets. Shadow became darkness, and darkness became obscurity. One day the villagers saw an old man going up the mountain holding a spoon. Asked what he intended to do, the old man replied he was going to dig out the mountain. When everybody made fun of him, he replied: “I know I won’t succeed, but somebody must start”.
In this case rationality and irrationality produce the same result: the mountain remained where it was. But the old man had understood that what matters is to kindle desire, illusion, hope. He pointed the way to go beyond the commonplace, escape the shadow of conventional thinking - the shadows cast by the mountain - whatever the end result. With this story Jodorowsky seems to be reasserting the idea that creativity is not just an aesthetic gesture; it also brings healing, healing us from our prisons and our clichés. But doing so means letting the unexpected into the creative gesture, taking it beyond known surfaces - and especially beyond superficiality.

Mutation and freedom
These are the words - or perhaps we should say “suggestions” - that sum up SuperSurfaceSpace, the Moscow architecture and design exhibition gallery built by Gruppo Iris (Iris Ceramica, FMG e Fiandre) and designed by Metrogramma. This is the second exhibition space commissioned by the Italian Group dedicated not just to its products but also to innovative design. The space is much more than just a showroom. It is a place that utopia and desire can inhabit; a place of the night and the day; a place of liberation, welcoming the infinite possibilities of inhabiting it. It is a place of meeting and exchange, one...