Chimera Colore Grigio
florim > Wall Paint
In <em>Chimera,</em> Elena Salmistraro merges rigour with self-expression, in a graphic grammar laden with symbolic meaning. <em>Empatia </em>speaks to the emotions with graphics that interpret, through a highly individual abstract code, the stage make-up of a clown, with the aid of superimposed geometric forms and images. <em>Radici </em>is a tribal statement, a tribute to primitive ritual custom, evoked by the interplay between a sequence of triangles and rectangles and a set of figurative fragments. <em>Ritmo</em> is inspired by fabrics, suggesting the rhythmic alternation of woven yarns through a largely linear pattern. In <em>Colore, </em>the upheaval of a background of small isolated spots generated by a parametric digital program is combined with densely packed repeated forms. "The Chimera collection is rather like a book with four different chapters: I set out to differentiate these graphic motifs to create four totally different stories."<br></br>Elena Salmistraro It all starts with drawing. A <em>passion</em> for drawing. An <em>obsession</em> with drawing. Drawings like spider-webs, obsessively filling spaces, in a kind of manual choreography or gymnastics, a continuous flow. Elena Salmistraro draws all the time. She draws everywhere. Mostly on loose sheets or random surfaces. First and foremost with pen and pencil. Her drawings only acquire colour at a later stage. Often - just like Alessandro Mendini used to do - she draws "monsters": fascinating yet disturbing, subversive forms. The denser, more contorted the shape, the more obvious its underlying truth. For Elena, drawing is an intimate act. It is relaxing. And therapeutic. With an unrivalled communicative strength. Because drawing gives shape to ideas: you both give form to the world and reveal yourself. This passion, combined with natural graphic talent, has guided Elena Salmistraro in her project for Cedit: an experimental series of ceramic slabs produced using a high-definition 3D decorative technique. The explicit aim is to transform surfaces beyond their original flatness so that a new, visual and tactile, three-dimensional personality emerges, sweeping aside the coldness and uniformity that ceramic objects often inevitably convey.Elena Salmistraro has always viewed ceramics as a democratic material, in view of their accessibility, and the infinite potentials for shaping matter that they provide. She began working and experimenting with ceramics very early in her career, just after she graduated from the Milan Politecnico in 2008. She came into contact with small artistic craft firms specialising in smallproduction lots, and cut her teeth on projects that demanded the hand-processing of every detail, and finishes of high artistic value, for the high end of the market. The large corporations and galleries came later, but here again Elena kept faith with her desire to make mass-produced pieces unique, and to combine artistic value with specifically industrial characteristics. The monkey-shaped <em>Primates</em> vases reflect this method and intention, aiming to excite, surprise and charm. Antiminimalist and hyper-figurative, playful, ironic and a rich image-maker, often drawing on anthropology and magic, over the years Salmistraro has built up her own fantastic universe, inhabited by ceramic bestiaries, painted jungles and a cabinet like a one-eyed cyclops , always finding inspiration and inputs in nature and always aiming to reveal the extraordinary in the everyday. Given this background, it was almost inevitable she would work with Cedit: constantly seeking new talents and new approaches, as well as designs that break down the boundaries of ceramics and release them into the realm of art and innovation, the Modena company has recognised Elena Salmistraro as a leading contemporary creative spirit and involved her in a project intended to experiment with fresh ideas in materials and synaesthetics.Salmistraro's collection for Cedit is entitled <em>Chimera</em> and consists of large ceramic slabs, which can be enjoyed not only visually, through their patterns and colours, but also on a tactile level. Like the chimera in the "grotesque" tradition, monstrous in the etymological sense of the word with its merging of hybrid animal and vegetable shapes, the Cedit project attempts to originate a synaesthetic form of ceramics, through a three-dimensional development that exactly reproduces the texture of leathers and fabrics, creating an absolutely new kind of layered effect, with a tactile awareness that recalls the passion of grand master Ettore Sottsass for "surfaces that talk". And the surfaces of the slabs Salmistraro has created really seem to talk: in <em>Empatia </em>clown faces add theatricality to the cold gleam of marbles, interspersed with references to Art Déco graphics; <em>Radici</em> uses the textures of leathers and hide as if to re-establish a link between ceramics and other materials at the origins of human activity and creativity; in <em>Ritmo</em> the texture of cloth dialogues with pottery, almost in homage to the tactile rationalism of warp and weft, of which Bauhaus pioneer Anni Albers was one of the most expressive past interpreters ; finally, <em>Colore</em> has a spotted base generated by computer to underline the contrast between analogue and digital, the graphic sign and the matter into which it is impressed. It is an aesthetic of superimposition and mixing, and especially of synaesthesia: as in her drawings, in the <em>Chimera </em>slabs Elena Salmistraro's art is one of movement and acceleration. A process not of representation but of exploration. Of the world and of oneself. Almost a kind of Zen, for distancing oneself from the world to understand it more fully. In every sense.
Graphite Matt
mutina > Wall Paint
Developed by OEO Studio, Accents collection offers a wide range of paints: 20 colours are available in the variants Matt and Satin.Mutina paints have been specifically developed to be paired with the ceramic tiles of the company, both in terms of palette and finish.
Storie Castello
florim > Wall Paint
The faded wall fresco, damp stains in plaster. «Technological innovation enables us to reproduce on large-sized ceramic materials all the effects of wear and stratification that normally only time is able to create.» Giorgia Zanellato & Daniele Bortotto Children stare at the walls of a farmhouse, wondering what the cracks are, and whether every mark is a path and every path is a story. They think that miniature beings live in the air pockets that have formed, and the detaching plaster is like an avalanche cascading from a glacier. They don't ask why the colours are as they are, because they just had to be like that. And every square centimetre becomes the first page of an adventure that restarts at every break in the pattern. Could this be why we say that both textures and plots have twists, and stories are woven? As even children know, walls are tales. Not only do they contain adventures, emotions, moments, loves and hates and record them on their surfaces; their uneven, active surfaces generate new imaginary worlds, in which one can literally get lost. The "Storie" collection by Giorgia Zanellato and Daniele Bortotto brings this metaphor to three-dimensional life by expressing the moods, loves and hates and moments that the walls and floors of old Italian homes conserve, and capturing them in a frozen instant. The theme of time and the changes wrought in matter by the passing seasons, weather and human action have always been a strong source of inspiration for architects: some have tried to freeze it, while others have used sleight of hand to embrace it while resisting its effects, and yet others have accelerated, anticipated, directed and re-created it.<br /> Zanellato and Bortotto do all these things at once, engaging in a duel with History with a capital H, in which it is never clear who is winning: design or object, man or nature, culture or time. And it is probably this unresolved tension which makes the "Storie" designs so universal and meaningful, so intimate and yet familiar. The floor is the only thing we can be certain that everyone entering our home will touch, and at the same time it is the most intimate part, the most steeped in private happenings. They talk about having your "feet firmly on the ground". This image stands for common sense, but also a recognition of how things are, how things work. The wall is a synecdoche, too: it is the part of the home that expresses an idea of solidity, the layering of time, the passage of lives. "Storie" gives form to this metaphor by drawing a line that links the most classical of taste to a sophisticated modernity of taste and style. The two designers did a great deal of background work for this project: old Italian homes, country villas, noble palazzos, farmhouses and old factors, which become an unlimited source of motifs, colours, textures and materials. But, perhaps unconsciously, literature also re-emerges from this survey of locations, with its blend of aestheticism and decadence, with echoes of Wilde and D'Annunzio, Ruskin and Huysmans. "Storie" would be the ideal backdrop for Des Esseintes, the dandy in "A Rebours". And in fact the collection clearly has strong theatrical connections, arising partly from its storytelling connotations but also from its scene-setting potential.<br /> It represents life, which we are, have been and wish to continue to be. And it is thrilling to realise that this vision comes from the youngest designers in CEDIT's new era, who have successfully taken a confident, cultured, astute, sidelong approach to the most ancient of topics, with a persuasive effect which appears, at least, to be not at all intimidated by the many stories, the type of product they are dealing with, the catalogue in which they are included, the designers who have gone before them or, naturally, the adventures that lie concealed in the historic dwellings they reproduce. The reference to Italy, on the other hand, is in perfect harmony with the work of the brand and its past and present designers: it is intrinsic to the perfection of the production process that underlies the collection, the relationship with the brand's tradition and its local roots, and the intelligent, strategic use of its innovations in the treatment of this complex material.Child's play? Yes, but with the integrity and ability to enchant unique to specific designs, capable of an immediacy of vision and feeling that makes them little novels written in cement.
Rilievi Sabbia
florim > Wall Paint
The alternation and symbiosis between concave and convex, recessed and raised. <p>Rilievi is a work of design balanced between different historic periods: while the volumetric relief tile modules are inspired by artistic experiments conducted in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, the large slabs are the outcome of research into materials and technology that has only come to fruition in very recent times. The shadow effects generated on the surfaces of the slabs by the light striking the projecting parts of the modules create an unusual impression of architectural depth found virtually nowhere else in ceramic coverings, laying the bases for a new decoration interior design language.</p> This project simply embodies perfection - a term which certainly sets the bar high in a description of a new product for launch on the market. But when an enlightened manufacturer is capable of encapsulating a designer's personal research in a product to be added to its range, the outcome is a perfect synthesis. A perfect synthesis between untrammelled creativity and market trends. CEDIT had the insight needed to perceive, identify and rework the immense potential of Practice Practice Practice "“ a self-produced project by Zaven (Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno "“ and realised that its sophisticated design, originated by pure, pristine input (unadulterated by external factors except the noblest of them all, research) could provide the basis for an innovative, successful collection. I might add, a collection unique of its kind. Zaven is also a name that comes with guarantees; the two partners are good at what they do. Their work always starts from personal curiosity and investigations, the study of other stories (as in this case inspiration was drawn from the output of artist and activist Nino Caruso) and individual interests, which are broken down, developed, optimised and prepared for transformation into something fresh.Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno have a masterly ability to transform their own wishes and passions into design work of the greatest breadth and, as we see here, the widest, richest application. Their use of ceramics as a material is clearly outstanding and reflects a method precisely founded on the desire to look at things from an unusual viewpoint, under a different light. And to be daring. Zaven have an unconventional approach to convention. In the specific case of the Rilievi collection, the "modules" created for CEDIT seem to explode off the walls; in fact, they are constructed by combining the two-dimensional slab with its three-dimensional decor.Rilievi seems to be seeking space. More space. Even though these modules have actually established a dialogue with the wall from which they are born. At the same time, they hypnotise us with their tight sequence of lines, the pattern that is always different although its root is the same, and the intriguing, unusual colours that add another vital factor to the finished product. Their firm grounding in graphic design (and here we have come back to two-dimensional effects, of the kind most often associated with a wall covering) easily evolves into a facade which seems to have been carved with a chisel - although this is not the case. These modules are conceived to convey an impression of movement, and the three models, in seven colour combinations, create a powerful effect on a surface, which is never passive but rather an organic contributor to the forms and colours involved in the fascinating combinations. The slab is very much present and has the same worth and status as the relief pattern associated to it. In the light of this dichotomy between the linear and the sculpted, expressed through the skilfully balanced visual expedients, the use of repetition adds vigour to the module's intrinsic meaning. As we have seen, a rejection of facile, superficial creative dynamics in favour of an investigation reaching above and beyond has always been a central, clearly recognisable feature of this Venice-based duo, who already have impressive international partnerships to their credit, including the London Design Festival, the Kalmar Konstmuseum, the Paris Designer Days, Ca' Foscari University, the Venice Biennale, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Sindika Dokolo Foundation and the V-A-C Foundation, and also won the 2018 Wallpaper Design Award. Graphics, advertising and product design: the pair have always opted for a type of design closely linked to the observation of everyday items, followed by their reinterpretation in a version applied to experimentation with materials. This duality, combined with their energetic yet elegant visual language, forms Enrica and Marco's primary code, experienced in this specific context through serial carvings. On walls.
