Special Projects/
Trophy for the FORMULA 1 PIRELLI GRAN PREMIO D’ITALIA MONZA 2024 by Andrea Sala
1 September 2024
Pirelli HangarBicocca has collaborated with Pirelli to create the trophy for the F1 Italian Grand Prix Monza 2024, by entrusting its concept and implementation to the artist Andrea Sala.
Enjoy the making of the the interview with Andrea Sala through our “Bubbles”!
Andrea Sala designed VROOOM, a sculptural object which represents, through abstract forms, the long history of the Pirelli tyre and the idea of velocity and acceleration. The trophy is the result of extensive research by the artist at the archives of the Fondazione Pirelli, which houses over 150 years of company history, and at the company’s R & D centres where he met with engineers, physicists, chemists and other technicians.
The result is a trophy with abstract forms that represent the car at the starting grid, the instant when everything launches, that particular and definite limit between the before and after: the moment of the decisive push which the futurists artists managed to highlight, through works able to convey dynamism.
Andrea Sala therefore takes inspiration from the history of the automobile, through his privileged entry into the world of Pirelli R & D and production, and from the history of art using a lexicon of varied forms, in some ways reminiscent of futurism. The trophy becomes a sculptural structure and the driver on the podium is imagined by the artist a compositional element that is one with the trophy.
The trophy for the 2024 Pirelli Formula 1 Italian Gran Prix, composed of a jutting element in Valchromat and a base in chromed aluminium, utilized a production process uniting high technology, such as machine processing and digital control of the cutting as well as 3D production, and highly skilled chroming and polishing processes, making it unique.
Andrea Sala (Como, 1976, lives and works in Milan) is an accredited contemporary artist present in a number of Italian and international museums and private collections. Throughout his career, he has always explored the relationship between art and the history of design and Italian industrial production. His artistic practice is based on a fascination for materials and forms, on iconographic references that often derive from the avantgarde movements of the 20th Century in the field of design, architecture and the visual arts in general. He teaches sculpture at NABA, Milan (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti). After a masters in Fine Arts at Accademia di Belle Arti of Brera, subsequent experience in Canada and in Italy.
Selected group shows: 2004, Notizie dall’Interno, IX Biennale di Architettura, Venice, Italy; 2008, Quali cose siamo, curated by Alessandro Mendini, Triennale Museum, Milan, Italy; 2010, SI – Sindrome Italiana. La jeune création artistique Italienne, Le Magasin CNAC, Grenoble, France; 2017, Solo Figli, Padiglione de l’Esprit Nouveau, MAMbo, Bologna, Italy.
Selected solo shows: 2024, Sul Guardare – Atto 3°, XNL, Piacenza; 2012, mSm, Musee D’art de Joliette, Joliette, QC, Canada (curated by M. Carruthers); 2008, Allunaggio and Other Landings, MACO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, Mexico; 2003, Andrea Sala, Casa del Fascio, curated by Paola Noè, Como, Italy.