The Floor Is LAVA(PIU) by Davide Mancini Zanchi @ LAVAPIU

Curated by Celeste
05.10.24 – 25.01.25

Zanchi’s environmental artwork — a 4-by-7-meter canvas that transforms the laundromat floor into a bed of volcanic matter — is inspired by a widely popular children’s game, usually played at home, in which parts of the floor are imagined to open into a lava-filled abyss. To survive, one must leap from one strategic point in the room to another, landing in balance.

Whether it’s a playful strategy to combat the boredom of long afternoons indoors, or a form of self-training in danger and adventure, the game appears in countless variations across the world. Its literary origin likely dates back to 1958, when author Roald Dahl published a short story titled The Wish, in which a cerulean-haired, sharp-chinned boy must cross a carpet filled with black lava and poisonous snakes. Many years later, in 2017, the game went viral after two British actors, Kevin Freshwater and Jahannah James, began posting videos of themselves challenging friends to escape imaginary lava in various public places. Thus, The Floor is Lava became a viral challenge across major social media platforms.

For Davide Mancini Zanchi, the game becomes a pretext for creating a large-scale environmental painting that replicates the texture of volcanic material. A simple yet imaginative gesture that transforms an automated commercial space into a treacherous, danger-filled landscape:

“Normally, one doesn’t walk on a painting — paintings are delicate and get damaged when touched… but in this case, people bringing their laundry will be forced to walk right over it. Be careful though, because the floor is lava.”

The installation will be accessible for a limited time, due to its ephemeral and perishable nature. A vinyl window graphic will remain as a lasting trace of the artwork.

Davide Mancini Zanchi, son of his parents, was born in Urbino on June 26, 1986. In the early 2000s, he attended art school, but it was from 2004 that he began to focus on painting. He later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2014 he was a guest of the DENA Foundation for a residency project in Paris. That same year, he began exhibiting his work in solo and group shows. A few years later, he began a collaboration with Pier Paolo Calzolari, with whom he maintains an ongoing and active relationship. In the meantime, several notable exhibitions include toys are us at A+B Gallery in Brescia, da che mani vidi Zan Cin at Otto Gallery in Bologna, Mira il mare mà lè at Centro Arti Visive Pescheria in Pesaro, No diamond in the sky at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere in Rome, and Coba Coba at Megadue in Bologna. In 2020, he was awarded the Italian Council grant for a cultural exchange project in Uruguay, which included a one-month residency in Montevideo. In 2022, MONOCHROMO, a monographic book documenting his artistic journey, was published by Cura.books. He currently lives and works in Acqualagna, a small town between the Adriatic Sea and the Apennine Mountains, continues his artistic research, and teaches Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Reggio Calabria.

The exhibition is part of the fourth programme of LAVAPIU, hosted in the self-service laundromat of the same name in the Gammarana district of Teramo, and titled Decentramento (Decentralization). It offers a reflection on issues related to urban living and the socio-economic transformations that have affected city centers in recent years: the erosion of social spaces, the conversion of historic centers into zones of consumption, increasing security measures, and the calls for decorum. These are challenges that test the resilience of urban communities and their participation in public life.

Produced by Sunistema APS.

The Floor is LAVA(PIU) by Davide Mancini Zanchi. Exhibition views from LAVAPIU, Teramo 2024 © Celeste.