Discover the Wallpaper* guide to Salone del Mobile 2023 and Milan Design Week
Creative platform AMO was launched by Ambra Medda and Veronica Sommaruga, who look to their backgrounds in art, design and textiles to draw bridges between historical and contemporary creativity. Their inaugural venture is ‘Teatro Albers’, an exhibition at Milan Design Week 2023 featuring work informed by the teachings of Josef and Anni Albers that celebrates contemporary craftsmanship. Taking over the spaces of a Milanese nunnery and school (which both Medda and Sommaruga attended as children), the exhibition features the work of master weaver Laura de Cesare and London-based Italian designer Marco Campardo.
‘Teatro Albers’ at Istituto Marcelline, with textiles reproduced by AMO from Anni Albers designs
In particular, Campardo has been a firm presence in the emerging contemporary design scene, his work having recently been recognized with the Design Museum’s 2023 Ralph Saltzman Prize. ‘We were drawn to Marco’s work because of its experimental quality,’ say Medda and Sommaruga. ‘He is a very conscientious designer, but there’s a playfulness that shines through too. That combination of serious, academic thinking – along with a free-wheeling (almost mad scientist!) side is what we felt was really powerful.’
‘Teatro Albers’: Tutti Frutti Megalith by Marco Campardo
For the exhibition, Campardo created ‘Tutti Frutti Megalith’, a collection of stools that stem from the designer’s ongoing experimentation with materials and colour – this time looking at the Alberses’ approach to palettes. Campardo’s distinctive attitude to design is based on an exploration of industrial methods, filtered through a handmade process.
To make the stools, Campardo used a cardboard mould to shape the irregular objects made of resin and painted in irregular patterns applied through a reverse painting process, brushed by hand from the inside of the mould – the first time the designer has used surfaces decoratively, developed from a previous series using the same technique in solid hues. Although the colour combinations for this collection are inspired by Josef Albers’ book The Interaction of Colour, Campardo stresses that, like all of his work, ‘the process that led to the final outcome was intuitive, almost meditative’. The chosen shades are combined and camouflaged, ‘to create the illusion of a single, three-dimensional colour. One’s perception changes based on the interactions between them: it’s almost as if the colours themselves are in motion.’
‘Josef and Anni Albers had a gift for sharing and spreading their knowledge and values, not just through their art, but through their writing and teaching,’ observe Medda and Sommaruga. ‘One of their maxims – that you can go anywhere from anywhere – feels both boundless and extremely focused and disciplined. We love the idea of being freed to follow one’s instinct, whilst being driven by that very freedom to keep moving forward.’
Teatro Albers is on view 17-20 April 2023
Teatro Istituto Marcelline
Via Francesco Petrarca ang. Piazza Tommaseo
Milan
marcocampardo.com
teatroalbers.com
A version of this article appears in the May 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print from 13 April, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today