ORIGEN - SALONE 2024
MILANO, ITALIA April 2024
This is the account of how everything was in suspense.
Everything was calm. Silent. All: still, quiet.
And empty was the wide sky.
-Popol Vuh
Origen (Origin), delves into the macro and micro conception of our beginning. Four Latin American designers, from four different countries, stand as cornerstones, reflecting the profound understanding that we are all one, each of us, a fragment contributing to a greater whole, since the dawn of the universe. Within this exhibition, diverse narratives, an array of characters, and symbolic motifs traverse together along the delicate strands that weave the tapestry of Latin American cosmogonies: wherein order begets nature, nature begets matter, and matter begets us.
The works of Andrea Vargas Dieppa (Colombia), Mark Grattan (USA), Estudio Persona (Uruguay), and Habitación 116 (México) are bound in this exhibition by conceptual elements such as Universal geometry, nature patterns, and the intangibility of memories, different lives, touched by myriad different experiences converging to bring forth design from the realm of thought into tangible reality.
Andrea Vargas Dieppa emerges as a figure of complexity and daring delicacy, possessing an unrivaled intuitive energy to craft her own cosmos through the body of work presented. Her creations transcend mere artistic expressions, serving as honest reflections of her nuanced comprehension of artistic culture. The collection comprises a vanity, floor lamp, daybed, side tables, and decorative objects — a challenging yet harmonious fusion of traditional Colombian materials infused with Andrea's extraordinary vision of her own origin.
A sum of quotidian mental captures, memories, utopias, and life experiences come as a whole in Mark Grattan´s case pieces collection. A desk, a wall cabinet, and a chest of drawers elegantly rise from their foundations, each offering a reflection of Grattan's unique persona and design ethos, amalgamated during his years in the vibrant and contrasting backdrop of Mexico City.
Estudio Persona created a chair and a mirror. fold , trying to portray an intangible feeling, the chosen material plays an essential role, flowing to form these pieces. Folds that create soft patterns, almost wavelike, giving structure to the mirror and revealing the chair’s frame. Playing with the Illusion that the pieces float, melt; slightly distorting reality to disrupt the observer.
The butaque chair, from Criollo collection by Habitación 116 is the result of a never-ending syncretism that resulted in the rich vernacular furniture that constitutes Mexico´s tradition. An exploration of the intricate interaction between repetition and experimentation, that seeks to unravel how diverse techniques, materials, scales, and forms, explored within the same theme constitute the creative process that leads to the resolution of individual pieces and cohesive collections.
The exhibited pieces are weaved as a representation of our beginning, portraying aspects that are still very fundamental to our definition as humankind, as part of something bigger. The birth of our world was —and still is— the foundation of everything that came after. Our very own Fiat Lux.
