Curated by Chris Dercon

Of all the great Italian artist-designers of the twentieth century, Carlo Mollino was the closest to Surreal- ism and to fin-de-siècle decadence while never renouncing the Futurist passion for speed and risk (he was an expert skier, race-car driver, and stunt pilot). “Everything is permissible as long as it is fantastic,” he once said, and though his buildings are now mostly gone or neglected, his furniture, streamlined and eerily animistic, fetches prices in the millions. And then there’s photography: those extraordinary Polaroids that transform his built designs into the sepulchral setting for a theater of morbid eroticism starring the streetwalkers of Turin. For what will be curator Chris Dercon’s last exhibition at the Haus der Kunst (he recently became director of Tate Modern), this exhibition—with related works by Armin Linke, Simon Starling, and Nairy Baghramian—ties together the varied strands of Mollino’s eccentric oeuvre.

— Barry Schwabsky