“World unframed” – Antonino Benincasa

A new appointment for exploring the artist Matt Mullican’s artwork 102 Signs for a Museum Fence at Museion Passage. A talk by the designer, Antonino Benincasa

The talk will be available from Tuesday 9th March on the Museion YouTube channel “MUSEIONbz”

This Museion initiative that features five online interviews inspired by the American artist, Matt Mullican’s artwork “102 Signs for a Museum Fence” seeks to weave a conversation between art and various other disciplines, such as neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, literature and design. The installation, which has been on display on the ground floor of Museion since last November, marks the opening of a new format at Passage, in which works from the museum collection will be exhibited independently of the other exhibitions on display.

In the event on Tuesday 9th March, Mullican’s artwork will be examined from the perspective of design with Antonino Benincasa, Professor of Communications Design at the Arts and Design Faculty of the Free University of Bolzano. Benincasa will examine, in particular, the function of pictograms that, in his opinion, lies primarily in orientation, in public buildings, for example. One of the decisive steps in this sense was taken in 1972 with the pictograms created for the Munich Olympics, in Germany. But the history of pictograms is much older than that, as they really begin right back with the first cave paintings. Matt Mullican’s art also contains signs of immaterial or religious contexts. In this sense, there are also communication design approaches that seek to represent human situations and facts of life that go beyond strictly day-to-day functions. In this case, art and design converge.

Benincasa will give his talk in German. Versions of the video with Italian and English subtitles will be available on the Museion YouTube channel.

Watch the video interview

Antonino Benincasa (b. 1967) is a designer. In 1993 he graduated at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Schwäbisch Gmünd. In 1996 he moved to Italy. In Milan he founded the “72 dpi” design studio. From 1997 to 2005 he taught Visual Communications at the Technical University of Milan. In 1999 he founded the “Husmann-Benincasa Corporate & Brand Design” studio together with Nicole Husmann. In 2000 he won the international competition for the design of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics logo and corporate identity. Since 2005 he has been a Professor at the Arts and Design Faculty of the Free University of Bolzano.