Amano Corpus Animae: an immersive experience
Amano Corpus Animae goes beyond formal experiences and aims to turn each visitor into the main character: it’s not only an exhibition, but a true immersive journey capable of involving the emotional memory. With more than 130 original artworks to tell the history of worldwide animation and entertainment, the first retrospective celebrating the 50-year career of the visionary Sensei Yoshitaka Amano will take place at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan from November 13th, 2024, to March 1st, 2025.
Organized and produced by Lucca Comics & Games and curated by Fabio Viola – already culture partner for the festival videogames area – the exhibition will be the largest and the most complete ever dedicated to the Japanese artist in the West. It will be held in Milan, an international crossroads of Design, Fashion, Art and Entertainment, a bridge between visual arts and a place that celebrates creativity.
The preparation project of this first European exposition will be realized in collaboration with POLI.design, the international university center for education in design, founded in 1999 by Polytechnic University of Milan and recognized worldwide. All information on the exhibition is already available on the website amanocorpusanimae.com, while tickets are available on Ticketone.
Once-in-a-lifetime experiences will make the exhibition unique. For instance, it will be possible to visit the exposition directly accompanied by Yoshitaka Amano: an exceptional event for only 50 people, promoted in the previous months through a special Kickstarter campaign. The exposition will also live through the events within it, designed by POLI.design and organized in collaboration with Lucca Comics & Games. As a matter of fact, in the areas of Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, there will be multiple events to deepen the bond between Amano’s art and the world of contemporary culture, from design to fashion, through the world of illustration and graphic communication. Many workshops, talks and design challenges will be organized, in the company of renowned people in the field of contemporary design, and they will offer a space of debate to new artists, students and creative people who trust in design and visual arts to change the world and who will liven up the exhibition of Shizuoka’s Sensei during his 100 days of visit.
The transmedia art of Amano
From Tatsunoko to Final Fantasy, the works that have distinguished the boy of Shizuoka in the Olympus of entertainment artists, making him a creator of contemporary mythologies, will be exhibited according to a project of exhibition realized in collaboration with POLI.design, that wants to be a bridge between visual arts and design, putting in dialogue the art of Amano with the innovation and the aesthetic experimentation.
The exhibition offers a multisensorial experience that guides the visitor on a journey among the most iconic works of the Master, punctuated by a succession of spaces dedicated to different artistic stages of Amano’s career. Thanks to the VR experience, it will be possible to access exclusive contents: visitors will be able to enter the three studios of Yoshitaka Amano in Tokyo, where his works are conceived and realized. A journey in the life of the Sensei where it will be possible to get closer to the tools of work, to observe the books and objects of his daily life, but also to access a wide collection of works, many of which have never left his home, also allowing to investigate other aspects of his artistic career. An “exhibition into an exhibition” that, together with the many collateral activities to the exhibition, designed for the occasion by Lucca Comics & Games, will make visitors protagonists as well as works.
Exhibition and Works Sections
As well as the artistic production of Amano, characterized by a multifaceted production ranging from video games to manga, from anime to theater, from fashion to fine art, the exhibition Amano Corpus Animae wants to be a sequence of narratives and gestures able to retrace the many souls of the author. Through four sections, we will enter the world of the Master thanks to sketches, paintings, drawings and colors of iconic works now imprinted in the collective imagination: from the first drawings for the animation of the Tatsunoko period to the variant covers of Batman or Superman; from Pinocchio of the early 70s to the original drawings of Final Fantasy that will be exhibited for the first time in Europe; up to the unpublished works of 2024 as the one in three acts, related to Puccini’s Centenary, with which Amano wanted to pay tribute to this edition of Lucca Comics & Games by drawing the three posters. The project aims to restore the spirit of the places that host the characters and mythologies of Amano.
The exhibition follows a time-series rhythmed by calligraphic noren, hanging between the different sections, which invite the visitor to follow a Japanese gesture characterized by rituals, pauses and points of attention.
The exhibition opens with a character room, literal diorama of The Boy of Shizuoka, whose references at the beginning of Amano’s training are returned with a traditional and biographical iconography, made of memory fragments that can be seen as memories of the years spent in Tatsunoko (1967-1982): the legendary Japanese animation studio where Amano contributed to the birth of iconic cartoons broadcast worldwide. Here it will be possible to admire visuals related to the productions entered in the life of million people such as Hurricane Polimar, Gatchaman, Tekkaman, Pinocchio, Ape Magà, Time Bokan and many many others. A dive into the origins of the Shizuoka master to understand the cultural and working fondamentals that made him one of the masters of contemporary art.
In a specific area it will be possible to admire the first steps of Amano as an independent artist. A career, started in the early '80s, characterized by works for hundreds of book covers. These are the years of the first international successes with the boards made for Vampire Hunter D by Kikuchi and the strong visual experimentation with the animated film Angel’s Egg made with Mamoru Oshii. The works in this area represent the "blueprint" of what will be the next production that will consecrate Amano around the world.
The second section, denominated Icons, is divided into three rooms, dedicated to the celebration of the entrance of Yoshitaka Amano in the western pop culture. Here the visitor will be able to admire the original panels of Sandman: Dream Hunters, born from the collaboration with Neil Gaiman in 1999, but also the alternative covers made for the unforgettable American comics like Batman, Batgirls, Superman, Harley Quinn, Elektra and Wolverine and many others. Further on you will meet three special works – the card of Magic: The Gathering, the poster for The Shape of Water and the cover of a David Bowie album – each one presented in its own "temple" and wrapped up in its own sound. The journey continues with the Candy Girls, the gallery of illustrated and mirrored portraits.
Next comes the Game Master section, where for the first time in the world you can admire all the original drawings made with acrylic on paper by Yoshitaka Amano for the series that changed the role-playing game genre forever. A long excursus with panels covering almost fourty years of the Square Enix masterpiece, from the first chapter in 1987 to Final Fantasy XVI. Through a parallelism between the final packaging and the original design, it will be possible to trace the evolution of the logos and cover images as well as admire numerous iconic characters from the saga born from the Japanese master's vision. In this section it will also be possible to discover other video games that Amano worked on.
The journey comes to an end at the Free Spirit section, which represents Amano’s entry into artistic maturity, gathering works exhibited in museums all over the world, and then following up with another narrative, that of the relationship of the Master of Shizuoka with Lucca Comics & Games 2024 represented by an immersive and sensorial work placed in the external loggia, and by the trilogy of official posters in homage to Puccini created by the Master.
What makes this exhibition unique
In addition to the quantity of works by one of the greatest masters that for the first time will be able to reach the European public, what makes this exhibition unique is undoubtedly the sense of community that animates it, from its design to its usability. A shared sentiment that was also made explicit with the Kickstarter campaign conceived, not to finance the exhibition, itself produced by Lucca Crea, but to give everyone, even fans of Sensei who will not have the opportunity to physically travel to Milan, the chance to take part in the great exhibition dedicated to Maestro Amano and thus leave their name in history. A campaign such as the Kickstarter campaign that Lucca Comics & Games dedicated to Yoshitaka Amano's exhibition had never been imagined before for an art exhibition: an operation that allowed everyone, at any latitude, to fully join the community of the Maestro's “super fans”.
With a unique merchandising and experience proposition that sets it apart in the crowded landscape of national and international exhibitions, this operation involved over a thousand donors from all over the world who booked exclusive products and limited editions, such as the open day ticket for Lucca Comics & Games (which will give its owner the opportunity to visit the international fair on any day from October 30th to November 3rd) or the exclusive exhibition tour alongside master Yoshitaka Amano himself, as well as art books and limited-edition autographed art prints, or the possibility of having your name included in the “Wall of Backers”, which will open the exhibition, where the names of all those who supported the Master's first European exhibition will appear, thus becoming part of its history.
An innovative participatory marketing action for the Italian art market that saw thousands of enthusiasts mobilize. With 370% of funding achieved and the initial financial goal reached in the very first hours of the campaign, this initiative put the author and his work at the center. A successful experiment for a Lucca Comics & Games that wants to step up its game, involving its entire community.