CASELLI 11-12 presents MAKERS 1, the first exhibition of a series dedicated to contemporary design, showcasing the work of 29 international designers and studios. The multi-functional exhibition space first opened its doors in 2022, following the process of conservative renovation of Porta Nuova’s ancient tollbooths led by OLTREFRONTIERA PROGETTI, a design and architecture studio operating in the retail and visual sector since 1993, which currently manages its activities. A game of chess played between matter and mind, that is, the hand: in MAKERS 1, materials and designers conspire, negotiate, clash, switch places. Adopting a hands-on, three dimensional approach to design as its key principle, the show cuts through what separates the thinking and making of objects.
MAKERS 1 unfolds around two focal points, wood and metal, to consider their possibilities of application in contemporary design, their specificities, as well as the recurrences and mutations of formal codes that give them shape today. Across the exhibition, the truth of materiality is met by the abstractions of technique: at times, matter seems to dissipate into–and be subdued by–the norms set by geometrical synthesis and the history of architecture, while in other instances, it emerges in its dense physical nature, where unexpectedness invariably thrives. Moving along this line of inquiry, MAKERS 1 aims to test the boundaries and conventions that cause the domestic and the industrial to split, overlap, or merge by bringing together a range of works that examine such polarity–often defying it. If matter still remains the vector through which human gestures can be in the world, MAKERS 1 takes on the question of form by addressing the infinite project, and the continuous process, of bringing thought into being.
Through an interdisciplinary program of partnerships and research-based projects, CASELLI 11–12 hosts collaborations with national and international design studios, promoting both emerging
and established practices.
ANTONIO BARONE
Raster Furniture Armchair 01
aluminum, steel, EPDM foam, 61x70x53
A reversible, plug-in system that enables the user to edit the
object by reshuffling its parts, the armchair is an exercise
in decontextualization of industrial and architectural
artifacts. The press-lock aluminum raster turns the item into
a scalable interface and a piece of modular furniture.
Photography by Francesco Stelitano
MAX MILA SERRA
PR625-arecibo led
110x110x20cm
Working with scale, it is a shrunken-down model of a larger
original. A light instrument multiplying and resonating light
rays while also containing them, exactly as the original
telescope does with cosmic rays.
Courtesy of the artist
RAPHAEL KADID
Oblago lamp
solid CNC aluminum, black anodizing, 8x25x25cm
Inspired by primitive architecture, animal dynamism and
neo-futurist concepts, Oblago is the result of a research on
ellipsoid geometries – shapes nearly impossible to achieve
by hand. The lamp’s body is made by carving a single block
of aluminum to its limits: at the tangent between inner and
outer shell, only 1 mm wall thickness remains.
Photography by Francesco Stelitano
JACLYN PAPPALARDO
La Curva Chair
88x40x47cm
Stemming from a project on the use of seating in movies
and its role in character-building, the chair explores the
relationship between furniture and film, fiction and reality,
taking the simple profile of a human sitting position
with an L-shape leg as its starting point, to then repeat it
obsessively.
Courtesy of the artist
BUREAU BARBIER BOUVET Stupid Bending, 25x30x25cm. The Stupid Bending series began in 2009. The cleverness of those bended lights comes from being made of basic stainless steel tubes, simply bent to endow them with a function which, together with their materials, determines the lamp’s final shape.
KATY BRETT Old House Chair, plywood with wax, 40x35x80cm, Hand-carved Oake Stool & Flowers,Cottage, Flowers, pine and oak with wax, 35x40x20cm. These stools act as evolutions of Old House Chair’s narrative. Both stools are intrinsically linked to Strathcarron beach in the Scottish Highlands, where further porcelain shards were unearthed.
Photography by Francesco Stelitano.
ARNAUD EUBELEN
Lander table light
25x25x30cm
old white glass cover, cut wine glass bottle, rusted
perforated steel sheet, drawer handle, socket, switch, bulb,
electric mower cable, threaded shaft, nuts, washer.
Photography by Elena Coscia.
KATY BRETT
Old House Chair
plywood with wax, 40x35x80cm
The design of Old House Chair was informed by broken
porcelain, foraged in the forest behind Old House, a cottage
in West Sussex. With a dark finish that mimics the burnt
oak beam above the fireplace, the chair is composed of
six plywood segments cut to the same shape as the found
shards, and engraved with their fragmented illustrations.
Photography by Elena Coscia.
CLAUDIA GIRBAU
Aluminum vase with side perforations
11x34cm
These vases look into how, with an almost zero degree of
intervention, a minimal aspect of utility can emerge out of
something, revealing the sophistication bounded into a
gesture as primitive as adding a small opening into a surface.
Photography by Francesco Stelitano.
LEVENT OZRUH
Two Point One, PRIMITIVES [1]
3D printed quartz sand, 40x40x60cm
PRIMITIVES [1] blend the geological and the archeological,
sitting alongside the constant flux of erosion. At the scale
of a nightstand, they are hybrids of sculpture and furniture:
frozen instants in a voxel-based negotiation between
volumetric simplicity and cavitary articulation, they question
what makes an object primitive – the generated aesthetics,
the tools of creation, or the society it is produced for.
ZAVEN
Obione
168x52x39cm
Designed and built in Zaven’s workshop, Obione is the
result of an exercise in learning and sharing experiences
aimed at the understanding of matter, form and function.
While creating this object, the studio aimed to look for
ways to design simple, functional objects of use that can be
manufactured autonomously, with materials easy to gather
and learnable techniques.
Photography by Francesco Stelitano.
TORNASOL STUDIO
Turbine
80x65x65cm
Turbine is a rotating, revolving piece of furniture that serves
both as a side table and a bookcase. Its materiality and
geometry refer to the industrial world of machines and
motors, echoing its rotating function. Lacquered steel and
plastic wheels.
Photography by Francesco Stelitano.
ARNAUD EUBELEN One Time Chair, 75x35x45cm, clothes rack steel tube, MDF panel, ironing burned fabrics, multiplex wood bed slat, corroded brass tube, threaded shaft, nuts, washers.
Courtesy of the artist.
MAX MILA SERRA PR-625 arecibo led, 110x110x20cm. ARNAUD EUBELEN One Time Chair 75x35x45cm.
Photography Francesco Stelitano.
