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From Monday, June 7th to Saturday July 31st 2010, Cardi Black Box will present the first solo show in Italy by swiss artist-designer Mattia Bonetti, unquestioned international talent. The concept of the exhibit is born from the growing contamination between contemporary art and other creative disciplines.
An international project that will stage for the first time in Italy a solo show of the Swiss artist-designer Mattia Bonetti. A selection of works, all limited edition, will be displayed among which four new pieces realized exclusively for Cardi Black Box. Besides that Bonetti will presents a selection of drawing realized in the last years as skteches for his creations.
Mattia Bonetti is a versatile figure, a creative artist who demonstrates in his works a great draughtmanship in drawing and a remarkable skill in the passage from the model to its three-dimensional realization.
The sketches of his creations are the fundamental starting point for the realization of his design pieces yet the single plates are in themsleves incredible works of art, as their exhibition in prestigious international venues has demonstrated.
For his creations Bonetti uses the most different materials: metals, different essences of wood, plastic materials and resins in a constant and bizarre contamination “between antique craftsmanship and contemporary technology”. Each of his creations are indeed the result of multidisciplinary investigations developed during many years in different fields like photography.
His most significant projects are of different nature like the two tramlines realized in Montpellier, the liturgical furniture created for the cathedral of Metz, and the Hotel Cristal Champs Elysées in Paris that with their peculiar aesthetics, have made them at the same time unique and recognizable, demonstrating a perfect example of contamination of styles, material, colours in a continue exchange between creativity, craftsmanship and technical innovation. Features that Mattia Bonetti declares: “There isn't a single thread of thoughts in my creations, I continuously have different inspirations. Being able to reinvent yourself every time can be dangerous but offers the possibility for a new birth, a vital need for me”.
The exhibition is realized in collaboration with Galerie Italienne and Medea srl. Special thanks to SIZ group.
Drawing in Three Dimensions
Text by Maria Cristina Didero
from NoteBox, the publication of the gallery
Mattia Bonetti designs fantastic furniture, in the most classical sense of the term: fantastic, that implies fantasy, imagination, the unusual, what is out of reality, what belongs to another dimension. He uses the computer only to finalize his projects; his pieces are the result of an exceptional work that begins with a drawing pencil on paper, a direct and quick technique that has always offered free expression to generations of creative artists. The combination of amazement and maniacal precision that characterize his way of working on paper is magically reproduced - with a work of months – in his pieces’ details. The ability to realize in 3D what exists on paper is extraordinary in the details, in the materials, in the finishing and in the colours: from the hands of Bonetti sprouts a new wonderland. This unbelievable talent to go from the drawing to the laboratory is peculiar and remarkable as extraordinary is his ability to give shape to objects of fantasy, the same objects that will be created and live physically in the space. Mattia Bonetti’s work is realized with the same care of a carved jewel and looks like suspended between dream and reality. You are almost afraid to touch them for the fear that they could disappear in a cloud of smoke. Voracious of different materials, the designer works with all of them, from the various qualities of metals to the several essences of wood, from plastics to resins in a constant and bizarre commixture between antique craftsmanship and contemporary technology.
Swiss, Parisian by choice, born in 1952, son of antique dealers, two big eyes that fall from above. He was born as illustrator, he experimented with photography, he has always loved research and creativity in its many shapes, he found himself a designer, or better artist-craftsman. Subversive poet, sculptour of pieces defined “barbaric” for their irrepressible visual impetus and for their expressive power, his works are so eclectic that transport the viewer through and beyond different styles. No definition suits Bonetti’s production: New Baroque is reductive for sure. Magic Realism is definitely out of time, Post-Modern far from his colossal evocative capacity. “Bonetti produces Bonetti” is maybe the only possible code for the variety of his production and for the vastness of characters that his fantasy without rein is able to transcribe in every new project. Bonetti goes beyond the borders of design and creates imaginary worlds that influence and surpass in every occasion our expectations: his works are far from everything we have seen and known before.
One of the main gift for a designer is being able to challange himself with the needs of his patrons' different dimensions and functions. Bonetti has realized projects of very different nature like tramline n.2 realized in Montpellier, the liturgical furniture for the Cathedral of Metz, the dining room of an “Arabian Night” villa in Miami and the recent Hotel Cristal Champs ElysŽes in Paris. Bonetti’s design is so versatile because it is able to receive and satisfy every new use value: “There isn’t a single thread of thoughts in my creations, I continuously have different inspirations. Being able to reinvent yourself
every time can be dangerous but it offers the possibility for a constant new birth, a vital need for me”. The pieces made by Mattia Bonetti are acquired to fulfil a desire and not to respond to a what so ever functional necessity although the functionality of the object is always included in the final object. Most of his projects are custom made, not in the technical sense but because the artist knows the identity of his patrons having analyzed their life, habits and dreams. Bonetti thinks that “we need symbolic objects that are able to mirror ourself”. For each of his notable and diverse supporters – that for the elective sharing become often friends – the designer tries to create groups of thought or collections of moods. This is the daily creative gymnastics to which Bonetti submits himself, his spontaneous and indispensable effort.
Not kin to sacrifice his fertile fantasy on the altar of the God Market, he does not follow schools, he does not homage anybody, he walks his path, he defends his right to be eclectic. Mattia Bonetti is a designer, an artist, but above all a free
Maria Cristina Didero
Biography
Freelance journalist and independent curator, lives and works in Milan.
From 1999 she is responsible at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein for the new projects and for institutional relations. She writes about design for different national and international publications and she has curated shows in Italy and abroad among which, recently, the project DnA/DesignandArt in Beijig with Max Lamb and Anon Pairot, the show Keep Your Seat at GAM in Turin and 13,798 grams of design in the spaces of Lambretto Art Project in Milano on the occasione of Salone del Mobile 2010. Last April she published the book Michele De Lucchi for Corraini editions, illustrated with drawings by Steven Guarnaccia. In 2009 she was the international correspondent for the Gwangju Design Biennale (South Korea) and she founded with Susanna and Paola Legrenzi FLAT DESIGN, the first textile brand for the kitchen.
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