BiM – dove Bicocca incontra Milano (Where Bicocca meets Milan), urban regeneration project in the Bicocca district that is transforming an iconic building into an avant-garde work destination, hosts in the C41 spaces the exhibition “Showroom,” the first solo show of Polish photographer Piotr Niepsuj.
The exhibition is part of the broader collaboration project between BiM and C41—an independent magazine and creative production house, which continues its mission of investigating the boundaries of contemporary visual culture by hosting well-known and emerging artists in two spaces dedicated to contemporary photography in the building undergoing renovation in Viale dell’Innovazione 3: C41 Gallery (on the first floor) and C41 Panorama (on the ground floor), a place of passage, accessible to all, that invites you to stop and observe.
On the occasion of his “Showroom” solo exhibition, Piotr Niepsuj has transformed the C41 Gallery into a temporary showroom, where a long corridor leads the public to an undefined point, to finally find “coffee tables” on display. Piotr Niepsuj’s coffee tables take their inspiration from signature design pieces – such as furniture by Gae Aulenti or Maarten van Severen. They are unique pieces of art that display a series of imperfect, everyday photographs taken by the photographer with his mobile phone around the world. The aim is to offer a critical look at what surrounds us, through ‘ordinary’ images enclosed in an only apparently perfect container.
A provocation summed up in the words of Piotr Niepsuj: “In Milan, everything is a product, an investment or at least an opportunity to communicate something capitalizable. An exhibition, even this one, is no longer a way of getting to know an artist or a place for intellectual exchange; now it is a content. A marketing tool.”
The collaboration between C41 and Niepsuj arose from the desire to involve a photographer with an architectural background to explore the interaction between space and physical images, a place used for art and exhibition, and a public, urban place (the context in which Niepsuj’s photos were taken).
Born in Poland in 1984, Piotr Niepsuj has been living in Milan for almost twenty years, where he works as a fashion and design photographer and image consultant. He graduated in architecture at Politecnico di Milano and in 2023, together with Aurora Gallo, he founded the non-profit association IMAGE CULTURE, MILAN dedicated to the promotion and production of art and photography. In 2024, he published his first book, Full Phrases: not a photographic volume, but a collection of the texts published for years on his Twitter account, to which he added new content composed by the author reminiscent of the style of haiku, short Japanese poetic compositions.
The “Full Phrases” are a product of the photographer’s own experimentation: the intention is to go beyond the surface of the image to decode its myth: language.
at C41 Gallery, Milano
until March 14, 2025