Visits Hinrich Sachs

Anna Gili, designer visits Hinrich Sachs

The City Salon at Stockholm’s Central Station is a place for people on their way – on journeys from one place to another – and at the same time a place for waiting – an intermission in time and place. In this specific room and circumstance – ordinary yet singular – Italian designer Anna Gili is present. Or rather: the imprint of her presence is.

Anna was invited to the City Salon by German artist Hinrich Sachs as a part of Moderna Museet’s Project program. In this waiting room the meeting between Anna and Hinrich has been both materialised and documented. A recorded conversation between them is available through headphones and Anna’s armchair “Tonda” is here too. Furthermore, a glass showcase containing assorted objects from Anna’s works as well as the ingredients to her favourite cocktail “Limoncello” is on display in the City Salon.

Anna’s colourful and boldly decorated objects stand in an otherwise Nordic blond interior. That way, they make a comment on the waiting room and the station as a geographic and cultural croosroads. This is a place where different nationalities and cultures meet briefly and then part, just the same as Anna and Hinrich themselves, and their audience. The portrait of Anna and her work also raises questions on the relationship between “home” and “away”, and on how the image of the home and its objects gets transformed through travel. Moreover, meeting Anna is a playful challenge to the anonymity that traditionally permeates a public place such as the waiting room.

Hinrich advertises this portrait – or imprint – of Anna’s personality, work and vision with modern commercial means. He uses posters and fliers – the way preferred by the young club culture to announce their events – and has Anna’s name stretched out in gigantic proportions, as if in a shop-window, along the window walls of the City Salon.

Hinrich Sachs stresses that the meeting with Anna Gili is an unconditional offer to both waiting travellers and visitors coming specifically to watch Anna’s work. The visitor to the City Salon can sit down in “Tonda” and let himself be embraced by its round red shape, put on the headphones and listen to Anna and Hinrich talking, let the gaze wander back and forth between Anna’s objects, waiting travellers and the multitude just outside. Or he can simply decide not to.