info &
stories
You say in your résumé: “I believe ritual, memory and imagination to often be the essential function of things”. Seems like a good starting point to talk about your work for Wall&decò. For instance, the theme of the seaside can be found in two designs: Perfect Day and Mineralia. Ritual as in the exclusive summer love for the sea that all Italians share? Memory of personal experience? Imagination of an ideal sea?
Standing on a beach in front of the sea, beach and sea, sand and water… it is a scenery made of simple things and yet completely alien from everyday life. I am easily taken away and I figure myself on another planet, thanks to the colors and the textures.
So if the beach is an extraterrestrial landscape, I thought I could observe it from a zenithal point of view, turning it into the perfect background for a pattern created by the presence of man, bringing color as scattered dots in the form of… parasols!
I called it Perfect day, but the black version could easily be called Tintarella di Luna! (Moonbathing – the title of an iconic 60s pop song made famous by Mina - NDR)
The idea behind Cannot Copy is fascinating and lends itself to various interpretations. I wonder, if I were to encounter it in a hotel room, whether my reaction would be positive or negative (all in all, it is a prohibition). The message is very current, but you did put it in a very precise context, both stylistically and temporally, with a date: may 23rd 1980. Is there a hidden meaning in the date? How should the message be read?
That date is an historical reference. The 80s were the years of VHS recorders and the “freeze-frame” that provided the inspiration for Cannot Copy is a sort of testament to those.
Copying in the worlds of design and art is a very sensible topic and, at the moment, an unresolved one.
When I set down to draw or design something, the message is always my indispensable goal: beyond form, beyond technical solutions, is the message – ironic or political is a small matter. It cannot be missing.
A room dressed with one of your wallpapers. Inside, a character from History or Fiction (from literature all the way to movies). Who are they?
A white room, with light grey furniture. A 3000 Kelvin degrees led tube is lighted on and leans on the wall, beside the sofa. The wallpaper is Cannot Copy. A vinyl of “Honey” by The Jesus and Mary Chain is playing. At the window, Stanley Kubrick looks outside while smoking.
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