FORMS & TEXTURES MILAN DESIGN WEEK

FORMS & TEXTURES

"A REFLECTION ABOUT THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN ART & DESIGN"

Milan Design Week 2022

Since we started our studio Masquespacio in 2010 we have been working on a wide range of interior & product design projects. Many times during this process we have been questioning what are the boundaries between Art & Design. Is our work to be considered a 100% design work or could it be pronounced as a mix between both, due to its amount of details, emotions and profound sense, questioning the regular and searching for a specific sense behind each concept?

Are the functional details we need to integrate in our designs for restaurants, making our artistic features in the same interiors being defined as a design element although it is purely an artistic feature?

What if our furniture designs like the Alex & Andrea collection are not created with the purpose of being purely a functional pair of seats, but as an artistic element that wants you to make reflect about what is to be considered a masculine and feminine material in our gender-friendly world?

With the “Forms & Textures” exhibition we want to start the discussion about the boundaries between Art & Design. Who is responsible to define if an object is considered an artwork or just a design? Is functionality the only reason to justify an object as a design element instead as an artwork? Or is it the reflection behind the object that makes it an artistic interpretation?

The “Forms & Textures” collection in this sense is presented as a serie of individual objects that could be interpreted at first sight as a chair, a lamp or a room divider, although its unusual and at first sight uncomfortable forms are making clear that we are not speaking about a functional design object.

The collection created from a line drawn on paper to a 3D printed object thus recreates a serie of different forms that could represent a furniture and lighting collection, but although its unusual and unusable forms converts them in an artwork challenging the viewer to reflect about the boundaries between Art & Design.

LISTEN TO THE EXPLANATION IN ENGLISH BY CHRIS

ESCUCHA LA EXPLICACIÓN DE ANA EN ESPAÑOL

The Design Process:

Following our reflection about “The boundaries between Design & Art” we wanted to start the creation process of the collection, changing our way of developing an artwork. Hereby instead of designing the different elements digitally in 3D as we always do; we decided to initiate the creation process through the use of a pencil and a paper.

The starting point of the collection thus was just a line drawn on a paper, that intensified our reflection about the line that defines if an object is an artwork or a design. In a further stage we started to process the lines in 3D, creating different forms that are standing by its own and at the same time connecting together; marked by a partition line that clearly creates a boundary between each form that makes the complete artwork. At the same time using a contrast of different textures, through materials and colors for each form we wanted to represent the boundaries between a design and artwork.

The different designs were developed from a 2D point of view and later converted in a 3D printed object, as part of the process were tradition and technology come together, questioning the use of analogic and digital techniques in design and art.