On the occasion of Milano Art Week and Milano Design Week, BiM, the urban regeneration project involving an entire city block in the heart of Bicocca, presents Paper/Northern Lights: for the first time, the work by Gianni Pettena – originally created in 1971 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and later re-presented in several editions around the world – is exhibited in Milan in its entirety.

Curated by Davide Giannella and promoted by BiM and the collective of artists Specific – founded by artists Patrick Tuttofuoco and Andrea Sala, filmmaker, author and “Iena” Nic Bello, and food designer Alessandra Pallotta, later joined by artist Gabriele Bianchi and artist and photographer Martina Ferrari as collaborators – the installation challenges the traditional concept of exhibition space and architecture as fixed and immutable structures, proposing instead an open, transformable, and shared dimension.

Part of the Milano Art Week programme, the installation opens on Tuesday, 14 April, with an evening opening event in the temporary ground-floor spaces at viale Piero e Alberto Pirelli 10. It will be open to visitors free of charge until 31 May, accompanied by a programme of public events.

On the occasion of the opening, Paper/Northern Lights will be activated through an intervention by Gianni Pettena, who, using a pair of scissors, will act within the space covered with strips of paper. The artist will intervene directly on the installation, initiating a unique and personal path through it: what emerges is a reflection on space – both the space defined in advance by architectural rules and the space measured by the sensitivity of visitors who, equipped in turn with scissors, will transform the installation itself into a collective experience.

A central element of Pettena’s work is in fact the active role of the audience, which does not simply observe but becomes an integral part of the process: participants’ interventions contribute to shaping the spatial configuration and the very meaning of the experience, turning the work into a collective event that evolves over time. Facing the long strips of paper suspended from the ceiling and filling the space, visitors cut their own paths through the installation with scissors, creating a temporary and spontaneous human-scale architecture. Through this shifting, labyrinth-like route – drawn within a total white environment – architectural elements are neutralised and the body is freed from constraints of scale, perspective, and partition. Stripped of its usual spatial reference points, the public is invited to immerse itself in a pure environment and to surrender to the discovery of a new sensory perception.

With Paper/Northern Lights, a reflection emerges on the relationship between individual and environment, between bodies and works, between action and transformation – suggesting that art, like architecture, can also be understood as a relational practice capable of generating encounter, participation, and community.

The installation is also defined through a luminous texture curated by Specific: a light that slowly flows across the paper strips, generating movement and introducing a previously unseen component into Pettena’s work.

On Tuesday, April 14 from 7 pm the exhibition will open and Pettena will join for the occasion. The registration is mandatory at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/papernorthern-lights-gianni-pettena-in-bim-tickets-1985497908693?aff=ebdsoporgprofile