From 21st June to 21st July Emilio Nanni is introducing his new cycle of works at Archiproducts Milano
“It’s about some sort of exhausting fight on two different levels. A form of dualism which is a necessary source to me and a series of pulses to fully benefit from. I believe I’m lucky because I can walk both roads: I don’t know whether it’s something about Art or Design, but both of them represent everything in my life.”
That’s how Emilio Nanni is introducing for the first time his new cycle of works called “Strange perspectives”. The exhibition is taking place at Archiproducts Milano from 21st June to 21st July and it is based on his research on symbols and its rarefied figuration, hovering between illustration and graphics. All his works are drawn with a black sign in tempera, china and other materials and realized on different kinds of paper: sheets coming from ancient VIII century texts and old novels. A selection of products designed for Billiani, Cyrcus, Saba, Pianca and Zanotta will represent the part related to design, as a perfect synthesis of his work as a designer.
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“I’ve always been wondering about the relationship between art and design, asking myself whether these two worlds could have something in common. It is a complex debate, because each one of them follows a specific path of evolution. I have come to the partial conclusion that this question was a vain attempt to give a definitive answer, especially since both tend to constantly re-elaborate their evolutionary roots parallel to contemporaneity.
I can only testify how I live these two conditions of art and design, two territories which are apparently similar on the surface, trying to prove that both have specific characteristics leading to evident differences. Design is based on the productive seriality of the object: the idea comes from the designer but it becomes a product thanks to a brand. Art represents the uniqueness of a work and it doesn’t perform any function.
The business and the designer form an indispensable combination in the concept of “Design”, from which comes the complete definition of industrial design: the idea/project is shared with the productive development represented by the brand, which is a form of social organization aimed at developing the “product”, from the know-how to the marketing sector. Its objective is to define and consolidate the identity of the brand on the market, parallel but conjunct to the designer. It’s the designer’s identity that expresses itself with the product, which is the result coming from the idea, oriented to reach these results: recognisability, competitiveness and profitability through productive seriality. It’s also relevant to investigate on the differences between Art, Design and Function, more specifically about the basic paradigm of the form/function binomial.
Design represents the completion of a function, which has always been object of revisions and formal elaborations that make it the cornerstone of the work of the designer, with the ultimate aim of returning a sort of reflection of the figure of perceived contemporaneity.
Art is another dimension, linked to the uniqueness of a work. It’s the artist himself who crafts a work of art, as a result of a personal lonely path. Making art is about looking for an existential and aesthetic measure, coming from introspection, without really knowing why it’s so urgent. It’s some sort of emergency that the artist feels and he needs to give back his personal expressive experience to the others, using his works. These don’t have a specific function: their aim is just to make the artist feel an emotional and spiritual fulfilment.
That’s why “Strange perspectives: art and design, an investigation about an exhausting relationship”: It’s about some sort of exhausting fight on two different levels. A form of dualism which is a necessary source to me and a series of pulses to fully benefit from . I believe I’m lucky because I can walk both roads: I don’t know whether it’s something about Art or Design, but both of them represent everything in my life.
At Archiproducts Milano I’m introducing for the first time my new cycle of works called “Strange perspectives”. The exhibition is taking place from 21st June to 21st July and it is based on the research on symbols and its rarefied figuration, hovering between illustration and graphics. All the works exposed are drawn in black and white, except for some works that show experimentation with colours. The only supports used are sheets coming from old encyclopaedias, novels, pictures and ancient texts from the VIII century used in ecclesiastical seminars.” Emilio Nanni, June 2017
