Davide Trabucco on 'Odio il decoro!' and Fornasetti's Ornament

At Palazzo Bentivoglio in Bologna, the exhibition 'Odio il decoro!' (I Hate Decoration!), curated by Davide Trabucco, reexamines ornament through the work of Piero Fornasetti. The show repurposes the installation design by Ferruccio Laviani from a previous exhibition, continuing the institution's practice of reusing materials for economic and environmental reasons. Trabucco explains that the idea originated from a photograph he took of graffiti reading 'odio il decoro' on a column in Via Oberdan, which he found paradoxically decorative. The exhibition focuses on Fornasetti objects from the Palazzo Bentivoglio collection, exploring how context shifts meaning—a plate in a kitchen differs from one in a museum. Trabucco arranged objects vertically to create a frieze-like rhythm, emphasizing decoration over form. He notes that Fornasetti's work, born in Milan, reimagined 19th-century bourgeois aesthetics in a modern key, ignoring hierarchies between high and low surfaces. The show includes photographs of urban decorative elements from Bologna's Basilica of San Petronio and Palazzo Albergati. Trabucco aims to provoke visitors to build their own visual universe, even with elements outside their usual taste. The exhibition runs at Palazzo Bentivoglio, Bologna, in summer 2025.