A Jewel of a City || Metropolis Reloated
By Fabio Cammarata
Curated by Patrizia Catalano
The first example of an anti-city can be found in Fritz Lang's magnificent and timeless film Metropolis, first screened on January 10th 1927. The anti-city is unsettling like a Gothic tale, convoluted like the innards of a beast, and unobtainable like a utopia.
A milestone of cinema, Metropoliswas surrounded by critique and controversy. It wasn't well received by Europeans (with the notable exception of Adolf Hitler), but it was so popular in America that ten thousand people attended the opening soiré at the Rialto Theater in New York. With this film, Lang created the oniric and romantic aesthetic (rooted in early comic books) that has since characterized countless science fiction films such as Blade Runnerand The Dark Knight.
Metropolis' science-fiction setting was Fabio Cammarata's source of inspiration for his homonymous collection, of which we are displaying the most unique pieces.
Descended from a family of Sicilian goldsmiths, Cammarata holds a decade-long relationshipwith Barneys department store in New York, transforming atmospheres and images into rings, necklaces, and bracelets.
Fabio chases the subject of his inspiration with implacable coherence. The groups of small gold-plated brass tubes (pilotis), assembled or intersected at variable heights, are like gleaming skylines of imaginary cities lit up by zirconium stones, domes and craters of faceted quartz.
With his goldsmithing Fabio Cammarata is making architecture into jewelry, pursuing the extraordinary Italian tradition of applied arts that began with Benvenuto Cellini's legendary Salt Cellar, the tradition we now like to call “design.”