CONCEPT
Presented in 2018 at the Museo Nazionale Romano (Palazzo Massimo and Crypta Balbi) in Rome, Classico Pop is a temporary multimedia exhibition. The installation reframes Neoclassical aesthetics through a contemporary lens, interrogating the historic practice of copying and reproduction in art. Instead of relying on textual or curatorial narration, the show uses immersive media, video mapping, mirror tunnels, kaleidoscopic reflections, to blur boundaries between original and replica, classical and pop. Spaces across the two museum locations unfold non-linearly: in Crypta Balbi, archaeological finds and biscuit statuettes (from excavations connected with Giovanni Volpato’s workshop) engage the visitor; in Palazzo Massimo, the narrative extends from ancient models to their Neoclassical reinterpretation and onto contemporary references.
The immersive design includes:
A mirrored “kaleidoscope” tunnel where duplicated classical figures multiply and fragment
Multi-projection onto mesh screens overlaying classical sculpture with contemporary imagery
Reflective and refractive surfaces that generate a “pop” sensibility for ancient forms
By collapsing chronology and merging analog heritage with contemporary digital languages, Classico Pop explores the “primordial popness” of the classical world, a living, reproducible, and continually reinterpreted legacy that flows, vibrant and cinematic, into today’s culture.
This project was conceived and delivered by the founders of LIMINAL STATE during their previous practice as NONE Collective.
LOCATION
Museo Nazionale Romano , Roma
YEAR
2017
For over a decade, transmedia artists Saverio Villirillo and Gregorio Comandini have been exploring the relationships between humans and machines, producing works ranging from installations, exhibitions, and social practices. After founding NONE collective, the duo of architects and A/V artists continues their investigation into the threshold between perception, consciousness and imagination with artistic practices that induce the audience into a liminal state.
Through the language of new media, the artists aim to guide participants in their works into ecstatic states where the boundary between reality and imagination dissolves. Mental journeys are generated by overstimulated bodily senses, assuming a condition of permanent change between present and future, fiction and reality, possible and impossible.
The liminal state of altered consciousness arises from speculative narratives where the artists activate a liminal rite in which the audience takes on the central role of enchantment generator, thus constituting the fantastical substance, the magical matter that frees itself from a disenchanted world overwhelmed by a cynical realism. The duo defines a transmedial aesthetic characterized by dark environments, where light, video and sound construct cyclic patterns, sudden glimpses, suspensions and hypnotic crescendos that become disruptive energy and lead to an unexpected rupture.
Their installative and performative works resemble collective rituals where participants find themselves in a liminal state on the threshold of consciousness, identity and time, where social constraints can be temporarily dissolved and future perspectives can be questioned. The dissolution of order during liminality creates an ambiguous, fluid, and malleable situation that allows for the establishment of new customs and an individuation process.
Saverio and Gregorio’s works have been exhibited at Light Art Museum (Budapest/HU), Somerset House (London/UK), Fukuoka Science Museum (Fukuoka/JP), Farol Santander (Sao Paulo/BR), GresArt 671 (Bergamo/IT), Design week (Milan/IT), K11 Art Space (Guangzhou/CN), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome/IT).
They designed and realized historical and scientific outreach exhibitions including “Copernicus and the Revolution of the World” at the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum (2023, Rome), “Classico Pop” at the National Roman Museum (2018, Rome), the Italian Museum of Audiovisual and Cinema (2019, Rome), the Roman Museum of Santa Giulia (2023, Brescia).
