OSGEMEOS
Efêmero
21 APRIL 2016 - 25 FEBRUARY 2024
Past Exhibition
Efêmero is the first intervention in the program “Outside the Cube”, dedicated to Street Art and other forms of art connected to the urban and public contexts. During the inaugural edition of “Outside the Cube,” OSGEMEOS—literally “the twins,” the pseudonym of brothers Gustavo and Otávio Pandolfo (born 1974, São Paulo, Brazil)—presented their first major mural in Italy.
Drawing inspiration from the history of the Pirelli HangarBicocca building, where train locomotives were built during the twentieth century, as well as from the close proximity of railway lines running parallel to the site, Efêmero recreates the silhouette of a city train on a monumental scale as it projects itself through the local context along an imaginary voyage.
With training based in hip-hop culture and “wildstyle” graffiti, this artistic duo has brought the culture of street “writing” into major international museums, developing a refined, recognizable style beginning in the 1980s. Characterized by the presence of oneiric landscapes and poetic figures, the work of OSGEMEOS draws on a vast range of cultural, social and political references, as well as the colours, nature and urban context of São Paulo.
About “Outside the Cube”
In 2016, Pirelli HangarBicocca, a cultural institution directed by Vicente Todolí and devoted since 2004 to promoting contemporary art through international exhibitions and projects presented in its indoor spaces, Navate and Shed, expanded its borders by dedicating a large outdoor area to new public art projects.
The work Efêmero by artists OSGEMEOS (until February 2024) is followed by Waves Only Exist Because the Wind Blows by eL Seed.
Through the “Outside the Cube” project, curated by Cedar Lewisohn, Pirelli HangarBicocca started a dialogue that over time, will turn the institution and its spaces into a new touchstone for developing and highlighting the artistic languages connected to the metropolitan context.
The building is on Via Chiese in Milan, a former train factory, located in an area on the city’s fringe which is divided by the railway and dotted with vast former industrial lots, now occupied by creative SMEs, the University of Milano-Bicocca and other educational institutions, as well as a nursery school and shopping center. Spontaneous works of art are already a major presence in the area, especially on the wall running along the train tracks from the Greco Pirelli station to the Sesto San Giovanni bridge.
Pirelli HangarBicocca, a non-profit Foundation conceived and supported by Pirelli, was created in continuity with Pirelli’s corporate culture. The company has always been committed to innovation, which also involves research into the forms of contemporary art that can in turn lead to new perspectives on the most important issues of the day: from the environmental emergency to social and geopolitical issues, to social inclusion and the future of multi-cultural societies. The program “Outside the Cube”, which has featured the interventions of the artists OSGEMEOS and eL Seed on the external spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca, is part of Pirelli’s broader cultural project, which sees in the opening of dialogues between different cultures and forms of artistic expression its fundamental purpose.
