The drama of the exhibition space: hybrid overlaps between display and design

ABSTRACT Starting from the etymology of the term ‘display‘, which refers to the action of dressing inner and outer spaces with tapestries, paintings and other decorative artefacts, the paper focuses on those contemporary hybridizations between display and design that have articulated what one can define as the drama of the exhibition space in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The research explores those artistic processes that, from the 1950s to today, have contributed to shaping the idea of creation as an assembly process exploiting the semiotic and narrative potential of visual constructs. In particular, it studies those hybrid overlaps in which the devices of spatial writing appear in their most tautological dimension, i.e. forms to be understood within the construct that they contribute to defining. Within a historiographical perspective and an interplay between contemporary art and exhibition design, the article finally seeks to mobilize current debates on the ability of new trends to generate a renewal of forms of presentation, processes of creation and contexts of diffusion.