The Labyrinth
The Labyrinth consists of an original sequence of escape rooms, freely inspired by an idea of the artist dating back to around 1960, reinterpreted as a multilingual, immersive, and interactive virtual reality environment for VR headsets.
A student of psychology and a fan of Jung, Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) imagined a labyrinth for psychological tests designed to directly engage the viewer. Depending on the choices made throughout the journey, the viewer ultimately discovers their own psychological profile.
Moreover, the research conducted during the development of the work has placed this idea within an international network of poetic relationships and influences centered on the concept of the “labyrinth”—from an exhibition never realized at the Stedelijk Museum under the direction of Willem Sandberg (of which Manzoni was aware)—to a famous intervention by Italo Calvino shortly thereafter (“Challenge to the Labyrinth,” 1962).
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Currently (’62) I am studying an electronically controlled ‘labyrinth,’ which might be used for psychological tests and brainwashing.
Piero Manzoni,
Soncino, July 13, 1933 – Milan, February 6, 1963
Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni was born in Soncino in 1933 and grew up in Milan. In 1956, he debuted in Soncino and then at the San Fedele Painting Prize in Milan, where he exhibited early paintings featuring anthropomorphic shapes. He began his exhibition career, designed posters with other artists, and joined the Nuclear Art Movement. Between 1957 and 1958, he created his first Achromes using plaster and later kaolin, with wrinkled or checkered canvases. He exhibited alongside Agostino Bonalumi and Enrico Castellani and collaborated with artists from various European neo-avant-garde movements.
In 1959, he co-founded the magazine Azimuth with Castellani and opened the Azimut gallery in Milan, inaugurating it with his exhibition Linee. He produced the series Corpi d’aria and Fiato d’artista. In 1960, he traveled to Herning where he experimented with unconventional materials. He continued producing Achromes using absorbent cotton, phosphorescent polystyrene, and cobalt chloride, and presented an event in Milan where the audience ate hard-boiled eggs imprinted with his fingerprint.
From 1961, he created new Achromes using fiberglass and synthetic fibers, plush, bread, straw, packing paper, stones, and polystyrene pellets. He began signing people, turning them into Living Sculptures accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. He produced Basi magiche and 90 tins of Artist’s Shit. Returning to Herning in 1961, he presented the Base del Mondo, an inverted pedestal ideally supporting the Earth as a work of art.
Manzoni took part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. On February 6, 1963, Piero Manzoni died of a heart attack in his studio in Milan.
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THE LABYRINTH
