visions
Dante Ferretti. ephemeral by mistake

with Benito Leonori

Dante Ferretti, originally from Macerata, is internationally renowned for his numerous collaborations on major Hollywood productions and has won several awards, including three Academy Awards for Martin Scorsese's “The Aviator” and “Hugo”, and Tim Burton's “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. The rooms of Palazzo Ricci display 10 pastel sketches on aluminium, paper, cardstock, cardboard, plywood and canvas — including those from the Oscar-winning films — and a resin model, all belonging to the Fondazione Carima collections. Visitors will find themselves immersed in the process of artistic creation, experiencing the same situation as a director when the set designer presents a creative concept through sketches and models.

The exhibition is a thrilling journey between darkness and light, to discover and relive how the construction of a film or theatrical production begins. This is where the exhibition's title comes from: “ephemeral by mistake”. «It's a play on words about the essence of the practice of stagecraft — the curators explain — wrongly considered an ephemeral thing that lasts only as long as the performance or the filming. On the contrary, the event, when it happens, is a shared life experience in the moment of its making, for both the artist and the viewer, and life is a succession of often ephemeral moments that characterise it and make it unique and exciting, eternal in its splendor. Considering a stage design ephemeral is therefore a mistake, because that varied world of images remains forever imprinted in a viewer's memory, both intellectual and emotional».