The mood at the AbanoRitz hotel is so special. Walking into the
spaces of the hotel, of the swimming pool and the park, you can
see the signs of the 50 years of hospitality, overlaid in an incredible
stratification of time periods, of aesthetic and engeneering culture
and of history of design. When the owners asked me to tell the story
of this articulate creature, I proposed to leave the usual describing
path to let the wonder and the pleasure to trace all the elements that
create the daily life of it keeping the history untouched, guide me.
Next to the already excellent services offered by the hotel, details
like the Nerviano vault of the swimming pool, the clever on-off
switch in the rooms, and even the single-use towel rack tell a story
of culture, innovative impluse and a sophisticated business soul. All
this deserved to be awarded and, honoured to have this task, I hope
I got the point.
Giovanni De Sandre
Fragments, objects, architectures, furniture: choices that are content
and not only appearance. Giovanni De Sandre’s work, meant to
enhance while recomposing, tell while showing, reveals our identity,
discovers a common denominator that is more about feelings than
style. I would say that De Sandre’s artistic project gives a philological
sense to the AbanoRitz hotel; and it makes me think, and I thank
him with all my heart for that, makes me think about the Japanese
art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi points out the cracks, decorates them and
adds value to broken pottery. The practice comes from the idea that
from imperfection a bigger aesthetic and internal perfection can
arise. When Japanese people fix an object giving value to the rifts,
filling them with precious metals or laquers, they weld the fragments
supporting the idea that when something shows a wound with a
story it becomes more beautiful. Real masterpieces, always different,
each with a different story to tell can be created with this technique. THANK YOU!
Ida Poletto