POSThome presents "Memory Foam" by Guglielmo Maggini

POSThome presents, on the occasion of the 2023 Milan art and design week, the site-specific installation memory foam by Guglielmo Maggini, the third guest artist of the residency program curated by Thirtyone Design + Management.

POSThome is a residential project located on Via Teodosio 15 in Milan, born from an idea by Claudia Campone, founder of the Thirtyone Design + Management studio. The program of urban residency continues by hosting the visionary work of artist Guglielmo Maggini.

The concept develops from an essential piece of furniture in the house, the bed placed inside the central cube, and explores the material that makes up the mattress: memory foam, a technical term now entered into common vocabulary to indicate an element capable of adapting to the unique characteristics of the individual, following their shapes, weights, and habits.

The artist initiates an action of subverting functionality by creating a three-dimensional object with bright colours that covers the space, betraying its ergonomics: it is no longer the support that responds to the needs of the body, but the individual who is forced to adapt to the surface, undergoing a physical experience.

The Memory Foam installation - named after the material - outlines a surreal landscape: plateaus, hills, and plains with magmatic shapes emerge from the surface of the mattress in a story with pop colors.

The bright yellow, almost fluorescent, transforms the mattress, an object that symbolizes shelter and comfort, into an inhospitable and disturbing place, an elephant in the room that acts on the viewer's emotional perception by creating a short circuit: the desire to enter into dialogue with the material and, at the same time, the fear of doing so.

"The bed thus becomes a place where dreams come to life, where the images of the day blur and the unconscious prevails over reality. Memory foam becomes a sponge of the unconscious, it is an experiential work that departs from the idea of contemplative sculpture and invites tactile experience by establishing a relationship between the body and the object," says Guglielmo Maggini.

Therefore, there is a clear oxymoronic connection with the genesis of POSThome, born as an after-home the result of the experience of the pandemic, characterized by the impossibility of closeness and even more so of physical contact, which the artist remembers and from which he wants to redeem himself. 

The apartment now becomes a place where the sense of touch and interaction with
surfaces are reactivated. The viewer is called upon to enjoy the work from the
perspective of "do touch", becoming an integral part of it and rediscovering intimacy with the material.