no time no space

no time no space – title of the twenty-eighth edition of miart, borrowed from the words of a famous song by Franco Battiato, a master of feverish imagination and endless curiosity – is also the theme of the 2024 visual campaign, which was entrusted for the third consecutive year to Cabinet Milano, a multidisciplinary studio founded by Rossana Passalacqua and Francesco Valtolina. The studio chose to collaborate with the American photographer Charlie Engman in order to propose a surreal journey and reveal a world where art, nature and reality are joined together.

 

The campaign explores the theme of the portal as a metaphor for an interstitial passage between different realities. Like in a vivid dream, Engman - who is well-known for his work among photography and artificial intelligence that challenges the limits of traditional image - blurs the boundaries between reality and imagination: dolphins are represented while dancing old Viennese waltzes in an attempt to evoke, as in a text by André Breton, a sense of temporal and spatial suspension, a parallel universe in which the animal world seems to have replaced the human one. The interaction between real and artificial photographic elements makes it difficult to discern between reality and fiction, challenging the viewer's perception with the invitation to enter these dreamlike worlds and reflect on the fluid nature of reality and art. 

 

The graphics also symbolically follow the theme of the campaign, reinforcing, while in continuity with previous editions, the idea of transition through the introduction of new visual components.

 

 
 

 

CREDIT
Creative Direction
@cabinet_milano
Photography@charlieengman
Cabinet Team: Fabio Maragno, Nicola Narbone, Rossana Passalacqua, Benedetta Stefani, Francesco Valtolina
Sound: Luca Venturini @waltermagi_
 

  

BIOGRAPHY 
Cabinet Milano is a multidisciplinary studio founded by Rossana Passalacqua and Francesco Valtolina in 2018. Cabinet is a creative management agency focused on studying and researching of new contemporary iconographies. It carries out projects for private clients, cultural institutions and companies. 
At the same time, Cabinet Milano is a fashion brand with the intention of redesigning workwear through carefully selected key garments that endure all trends, reinterpreting formal wear with a more contemporary, everyday look. 

 

Rossana Passalacqua is a Fashion Stylist and Consultant. Prior to 2003, she collaborated with several magazines and fashion brands. In 2015, with Eléna Olavarria Dallo, she founded Anticàmera, a location agency that takes care of location-based projects and agency's image, its creative direction and special projects.
She has collaborated with brands such as Gucci, Sportmax and MiuMiu and has been Fashion Editor of Grey Magazine, Metal Magazine and Rivista Studio.

 

Francesco Valtolina is a Creative Director and Graphic Designer based in Milan. Since 2008, he has been the art director of the international contemporary art magazine Mousse and of the publishing house Mousse Publishing. In 2015, he co-founded the design studio Dallas. Over the last 20 years he has collaborated with publishers such as Phaidon, Sternberg Press, Electa, Rizzoli New York; institutions and galleries such as dOCUMENTA, Biennale di Venezia; Quadriennale di Roma, Massimo de Carlo, Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, Triennale di Milano, Istituto Svizzero; and with brands and companies such as Pirelli, Luis Vouitton, Moncler and C.P.Company.
In Milan in 2021, he co-founded the space dedicated to publishing issues, Commerce. He taught Editorial Design at the ISIA in Urbino from 2012 to 2022, and since 2023 together with Rossana Passalacqua he has taught the final art direction workshop at the IUAV in Venice.

 

Charlie Engman is a Brooklyn-based photographer, director, and art director whose work pushes the limits of traditional image making, simultaneously principled and irreverent — imbued with both the weird and wonderful. Engman draws inspiration from his degree in Japanese and Korean studies from the University of Oxford and his training in modern dance. He is a recognized leader in the world of AI art, constantly investigating and challenging the limits of the medium. His work has been featured across AnOther Magazine, Dazed, Garage, POP, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, among other publications. One of his latest work is "Mom" a book published by Patrick Frey. His commercial clients include Prada, Marni, Adidas, Hermès, Kenzo, Nike, Vivienne Westwood, and Stella McCartney. Engman has worked as Art Director at Collina Strada since 2019 — continuously pushing the creative & conceptual boundaries of the contemporary, sustainable brand.