Vanity of the Offices

Vanità degli uffici. Solo exhibition at LibriLiberi, Florence, April 2023.

Not long ago people invented offices, and since then they have spent a large part of their lives in them. Offices were full of things: coloured pins, pens of every kind, staplers large and small, folders of different sizes — each carrying the marks of a hidden hierarchy. Directors and those close to them had the best pins, the special pens, the different folders.

People loved these things, and some of them brought luck: a friend of Sandro’s had a pen he took to every important meeting. Today that culture is slowly disappearing. Work moves home, the handwritten signature becomes electronic, and the neatly packed folder becomes a memory.

The drawings are a message to the future: the primitive tools once used to store and sort information were more than objects — they keep the memory of a strange era that will soon be gone.

The exhibition at LibriLiberi: drawings along a white wall
A fountain pen with its cap and a paper clip, the ink drawing loops
A blue pen and a paper clip
Glasses above rows of pins
A black pen
A green stapler and its staples
Scissors, a pin and a paper clip
A pencil and a crayon
A pink note, a pin and a red pencil
A green pencil and a yellow note with a heart
Pins and paper clips in a grid
A fountain pen, a lighter and a red pencil
A red pencil under two pins
A felt pen, tape and paper clips
A blue pen above a row of pins
An eraser, a green pencil and a pin
Pen caps in a column
A blue felt pen and a red pencil
Hanging the drawings
Visitors at the opening
The gallery wall with the drawings
A fountain pen and its cap
A brush pen, ink and paper clips
A yellow pen and a paper clip