Antonio Grulli in conversation with Flavio Favelli discusses UNIVERS. Un negozio metafisico [UNIVERS: A Metaphysical Shop], a book that inaugurates Magonza’s “le lucciole” [Fireflies] series.
This so-called ‘shop’ is an essential environment containing a hovering neon light bearing the word ‘Univers’. The artist informs us that it has no commercial dimension but is instead a metaphysical place on black and white painted shelves where various concepts survive: an ‘anti-shop’ where unique, original objects, signed and initialled by the artist, are sold according to different methods, prices and times. Some are made from recycled materials, all are non-replicable works of art detached from the law of the global market.
«In my ideal city there has always been a shop, which exists less for selling things and more to recreate the environment of a shop while not entirely being one. A nice shop […] where only a few things are sold, almost nothing.». (Flavio Favelli)