WOW! WALLS OF WONDER

WOW! – Walls of Wonder
SEA and MA*GA for Art

From December 17, 2024
Milan Malpensa Airport, Terminal 1

The project builds on the decade-long collaboration between SEA and the MAGA Museum, with a particular focus on Malpensa Airport, Terminal 1.
Over the years, the collaboration between these two institutions, known as SEA and MAGA for Art, has led to the creation of significant experimental projects within airport spaces: from installations by Ugo La Pietra and Missoni to screenings of Andy Warhol’s T.V., produced in collaboration with the MEET Digital Center and the Andy Warhol Museum.

Today, the project WOW! – Walls of Wonder represents a further development of this ambitious partnership. Conceived in 2024, it aims to transform airport spaces through site-specific installations by young Italian artists. The goal is to explore not only the architecture but also, in a broader sense, the anthropological and aesthetic dimensions of the airport environment, capturing those delicate intersections where functionality, waiting, and aesthetic needs converge.

WOW! is a project conceived by SEA and coordinated by a working group composed of Benedetto Viola, Chiara Alberghina, Giancarlo Iorio, Luciano Bolzoni, with contributions from Davide Bona, Marilina Palmiotto, Agnese Canducci, Massimo Filippini, Fabio Roncalli, Maurizio Baruffi, Maddalena Spreafico, Davide Furlan, and Mario Ponta. The project is curated by Emma Zanella and Alessandro Castiglioni, respectively the director and deputy director of the MA*GA Museum, with technical coordination by Monica Faccini.

After a lengthy process of selection and production, led by the SEA working group and the two MA*GA curators, on December 17, 2024, three site-specific works by Andrea Crespi, Marco Giordano, and Alice Ronchi will be unveiled as permanent installations within spaces dedicated to departing and arriving passengers. These works offer opportunities for reflection and moments of surprise, redefining—uniquely in Italy—the functional standards of airport spaces.

Andrea Crespi
In Every Journey (Love is the destination)
2024, 20 plexiglass panels, iridescent vinyl

Andrea Crespi works across physical and digital media, developing research that explores themes such as social transformation and the digital revolution. Optical illusion is a central element of this investigation, serving as a metaphor for constant transformation but also for the risk of confusion and misunderstanding in the processes of information transmission. Crespi’s works have been exhibited in prestigious national and international museums, including MA*GA Museum, the Triennale di Milano, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, Times Square in New York, and the Art Space in Dubai.
In Every Journey (Love is the destination) accompanies departing travelers. Each panel in the installation corresponds to a letter of the phrase Love is the destination, which emerges from the optical vibration of a white and iridescent pattern. The title of the work further completes its meaning. It is an invitation, a wish, but also a social statement that, as the artist reminds us, applies “to any journey undertaken, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual,” considering “love as a driving force of human existence.”

Alice Ronchi
True Care
2024
Enamel, polycarbonate, aluminum

In Alice Ronchi's work, everyday reality often merges with fantasy. Her poetic approach spans various mediums, from painting to installation, presenting materials, shapes, and colors that gently and unexpectedly seek intimacy and wonder.
Alice Ronchi is a visual artist and a professor of sculpture at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. In 2021, she designed the Formula 1 trophy for the Made in Italy and Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, commissioned by Pirelli. Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as La Triennale di Milano, MAMbo in Bologna, MAXXI in Rome, Stadtgalerie in Kiel (Germany), Zuidas Public Space in Amsterdam, Galleria Civica in Trento, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. In 2024, she was awarded the PAC 2024 - Contemporary Art Plan by Italy’s Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Museo di Lissone.

True Care is a site-specific installation that creates a dialogue between two airport areas that never meet: departures and arrivals. The work is an abstract painting distributed across multiple transparent layers, described by the artist as "an intimate and dreamlike landscape characterized by soft and reassuring colors designed to welcome travelers and accompany the gaze of those passing through. My intention was to generate a gentle atmosphere, a caress: forms and colors engaging with the ideas of meeting, fragility, and the sky. I aimed to evoke tenderness in such a specific place, a space of transit and waiting devoid of an empathetic, colorful, and reflective focal point. I wanted to create a poetic presence."

Marco Giordano
Sulla Punta Della Domanda/On the Tip Of The Question 
2024, Kinetic Sculptures, Metal and fiberglass

Marco Giordano works on thresholds, developing transformative processes through environmental installations that incorporate organic and technological materials; structures with a strong material presence and immaterial elements such as light and sound.
His work has been hosted by institutions including Pinacoteca Agnelli; The Modern Institute, Glasgow; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh; MAMbo in Bologna; MAXXI in Rome; and Museo del Novecento, Florence.

On the Tip of the Question is a work comprising three aerial kinetic sculptures installed in the skylights of one of the airport's most sensitive areas: the arrival zone, during the waiting time before document checks. The sculptures, made of vibrantly colored fiberglass blades, offer a visual cue for reflection on the movement of bodies from fluid to non-fluid states, creating a choreography, an intermittent dance. Little by little, they move us, displace us, right at the point where we face a passage in which a question is posed to us.