On the occasion of Miart and Milan Design Week, Marsèll and PIN–UP Magazine join forces to present Emporium, an exhibition by New York based art collective CFGNY, curated by Felix Burrichter.

Marsèll and PIN–UP magazine present Emporium, an exhibition by the New York-based art collective CFGNY (Concept Foreign Garments New York). CFGNY’s multimedia practice complicates the art collective’s concept of “vaguely Asian”: the plurality and unfixity of global Asianness and its aesthetic manifestations. Curated by PIN–UP magazine editorial and creative director Felix Burrichter, Emporium combines aspects of previous CFGNY exhibitions to create a new site-specific installation for Marsèll.
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Ranging from garments and sculpture, to architectural installations and video, the exhibition showcases many of the different material languages that the collective has developed over the years.

Extending across two floors, Emporium is divided into three themes, each representing a material that has been (or still is) an important commodity in global trade, shaping notions of national and cultural identity. On the ground floor, CFGNY uses cardboard both to cover the floor, walls and ceiling, and to create eight sculptures referencing the vernacular architecture of New York’s Chinatown. Also on the ground floor, the collective showcases a set of porcelain sculptures, made by casting the space between tied together discarded consumer objects like blouses, bottles, and vases. For the upper floor, CFGNY selected architectural details in Milan’s Chinatown (specifically via Paolo Sarpi) to reproduce architectural fragments that make up the built fabric of Lombardy’s capital. CFGNY then tasked Marsèll’s craftspeople in Veneto with covering the wooden copies in leather, turning the fragments into mirrors to look at the circulation not only of luxury goods, but also of people and ideas.