T J Wilcox. Hiding in Plain Sight

21.03.2025 – 11.04.2025

 

The Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio presents from Friday, March 21 to Friday, April 11, 2025, an exhibition of American multidisciplinary artist TJ Wilcox (Seattle, Washington, United States): Hiding in Plain Sight, curated by Davide Pellicciari and Carlotta Spinelli.

The exhibition, conceived specifically for the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, revolves around TJ Wilcox’s eponymous film, a cinematic portrait of the designer Eileen Gray (Enniscorthy, August 9, 1878 – Paris, October 31, 1976), considered one of the most important pioneers of the modernist movement, whose capabilities ranged from architecture to interior design, to painting and furniture design.

The film Hiding in Plain Sight is presented for the first time in Italy, after being shown at Sadie Coles Gallery in London in 2024. It is accompanied by a series of Chroma-Luxe aluminium panels onto which stills from the film have been transported. The vibrant, glossy colors and their dreamlike titles recall the grace and genius of Eileen Gray, part of Wilcox’s homage to her work.

Wilcox’s film focuses on a particular moment of artistic and personal transformation that characterized Eileen Gray’s life: the creation of her first gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. A creative concept in which not only the architecture matters, but comprises all the elements that flank it and contribute to the overall definition of the work, from the wardrobe to the stools, and even the carpets, mirrors and seating. This is villa E-1027, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. Apparently, the architectural project was partly inspired by Gray’s partner Jean Badovici, who reportedly challenged her by asking “Why don’t you build it?”

Wilcox had the opportunity to shoot inside the E-1027 villa, using a screening room as a set for his film, an area of the house that had been hiding in plain sight for about 100 years. The environment was “activated” by Wilcox’s art, for the first time in the history of the house, as if it were a lamp designed by Gray herself waiting to be lit. Wilcox’s film explores the themes Gray associates with the concept of home, inviting the viewer to consider the biographical traces that emerge from the narrative, through video documentation. The multichannel installation explores one woman’s personal interpretation of modernism and her unique proposition that “architectural formulas are nothing, life is everything”.

Eileen Gray’s eclectic education was rooted in the Art Nouveau movement of the late 19th-century and expanded into modern architecture. Born into an aristocratic Irish-Scottish family, she studied drawing and painting in London at the Slade School of Fine Arts, before learning the art of lacquer painting, a technique she would further explore in Paris under the tutelage of Japanese craftsman Seizo Sugawara. Grey spent the early years of her career between London and Paris, where some of her creations were exhibited with a degree of success, so much so that the English edition of Vogue devoted an article to her in 1917. After enlisting as a volunteer during the First World War, she moved permanently to the Ville Lumière, where she obtained her first major commission in 1919, when Suzanne Talbot, a famous fashion designer, commissioned her to decorate her living room. The meticulously detailed furniture she designed for the occasion was a response to the formal experiences of modernism and was met with great success, confirmed in 1923 by Eileen Grey’s first exhibition at the Union des Artistes Modernes. In the 1920s, Eileen Grey exhibited al Salon des Artistes Décorateurs – dove il suo lavoro viene apprezzato dagli olandesi del De Stijl- e successivamente invierà suoi contributi anche al Salon d’Automne, dove ricevono le lodi di Gropius, Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens.. In the wake of her newfound fame, Grey opened the gallery Jean Désert in Paris during those years, a workshop where she produced furniture in series (an unusual operation at the time) and experimented with alternative materials. It was during this period that Grey decided to specialise in interior architecture and design, gradually becoming a popular exponent of modernist trends in forniture. In current times, she is considered the epitome of modernism and is the only woman whose name is mentioned alongside other great designers of the time, such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer.