„Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse: A Retrospective“ at MAXXI Rome

An installation that physically ruptures the confine between inside and out. A large curtain emerges from the museum galleries and extends into the piazza, introducing a new and alternative means of exploiting the external space.

Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI


A Retrospective is a site-specific intervention composed of “soft” architecture creating the illusion of a false perspective and permitting the space to be perceived in a new way. The work is composed of multiple elements presenting almost 20 years’ work by the Inside Outside studio founded in 1991 by Petra Blaisse in Amsterdam.


Practical info

„Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse: A Retrospective“
February 25 – May 8, 2022
MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art
LVia Guido Reni, 4a, Roma
Italy


Two large semi-transparent curtains become an expositional device staging 70 projects. A number of models are exhibited inside the hall and in visual continuity with the outside. The installation is completed by a web of lines on the ground that traverse the space like the trajectories of movements and are an explicit reference to the Library of Trees project in Milan.

Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI

The projects illustrated within the great curtains describe the changeable relationship between interior and exterior, a central theme for Inside Outside, which the studio tackles on each occasion with an interdisciplinary approach that ranges across diverse fields, combining materials technology on the one hand and applied arts and landscape and interior design on the other. The work is part of MAXXI’s Architecture Collection.

Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI

“A Retrospective” is a project initated by gta exhibitions, Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich; curators: Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen.

Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
Inside Outside, Petra Blaisse. A Retrospective © Daniel Richard Passafiume, Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI