Tomáš Libertiny, The Honeycomb Vase “made by bees ”, (yellow edition ), 2007. Photo: Tomáš Libertiny
by Daniela Lotta
Alternative production process are becoming increasingly established in contemporary creativity.
Organic, pulsating materials and alternative production methods open to multiple variations and chance are becoming increasingly established in contemporary creativity. A generation of designers appears to have emancipated themselves from the logic of mechanized efficiency that previously subjected designers in favor of sustainable, hand-crafted practices that bring back and conceptualize the values of a preindustrial age. People clearly want to get back to basics with a return to the roots, which is exemplified by the use of primary elements such as water, air, earth and fire, and in energetic materials taken directly from nature. They employ rough, fleshy substances, whose uneven surfaces clearly show flaws and anomalies, delineating a formal grammar of the “soft” made up of fluid, unstable structures, with a flowing yet discontinuous movement.
We can trace a genuine “anti-form”(1) approach in some of Tomš Gabzdil Libertiny’s work, with his talent for re-purposing natural substances such as beeswax according to a seductive, decorative logic— beeswax being one of the symbolic materials used in “process art” as initiated by Joseph Beuys in the second half of the twentieth century. For his piece The Honeycomb Vase (2007), Libertiny constructed a hive in the shape of a vase and placed the insects inside with the task of developing the structure of the object.
Similarly, with his design for The Paper Vase (2007), the designer retraces the steps from tree to wood to paper to recover the material’s original, organic state, a concept found in the works of Giuseppe Penone. Libertiny used a lathe to shape reams of paper printed with an image of a tree, which in the final stage emerges as a shadowy form on the white surface of the vase.
Giuseppe Penone can also serve as a reference when approaching the complexity of the jewelry created by Hilde De Decker between 1999–2004: Voor boer en tuinder. These pieces were made through a creative process that forms a link, both physical and mental, with the growth processes of plants. De Decker inserted plant shoots into small silver structures and waited for time to transform them into ephemeral gems. This action bears some similarities to Penone’s work Alpi Marittime –Continuerà crescere tranne che in quel punto (1968–1978). This work spanned over ten years, the bronze cast of the artist’s hand gripping the tree trunk, forcing the latter to change form as it grew.
Hilde De Decker, Voor boer en tuinde, 1999–2004. “eggplant with silver ring” Photo : Hilde De Decker
It is no coincidence that we keep returning to one of the artists most representative of the Italian Arte Povera movement from the late 1960s, which aimed to show the behavior of perishable materials in its work. While in the previous examples the object comes about as the result of slow, primary processes that the designer simply harnesses, in other cases the formal language becomes more complex, arriving at new creations with a stronger aesthetic impact.
Studio Formafantasma—Italian design duo Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi, presented Botanica at the latest International Furniture Show in Milan, an interesting reflection based on the transformation processes of materials of plant origin. Beyond the ecological rhetoric, Formafantasma synthesizes natural polymers, re-editing the pioneering techniques developed around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The result is precious, highly evocative, decorative objects, an expression of “arcane nature” capable of salvation and taking its place under the sign of a sensitive, ornamental Neopoverismo.(2)
Studio Formafantasma - Andrea Trimarchi, Simone Farresin, Botanica, 2011.
Commission by Plart Foundation. Photo: Luisa Zanzani
These works evoke the uneasy, “formless”(3) dimensions of Spanish designer Nacho Carbonell, who has followed the crisis of the serial object with the successful manipulation of materials and forms since his earliest works. In 2006, with the work Por las Rama, he was inspired by insects to weave eco-plastic cocoons around the branches of a tree, forming emotional refuges that are reabsorbed into the natural landscape shortly afterwards, once their purpose has come to an end. Extraordinary material coagulations, which appear to have come out of the artist’s own psyche as the direct expression of profound pulsations, animate the installation The Fertility Cave, shown in 2009 at DesignMiami/Basel—a “loose” scenario that forces the user to participate by entering the space with difficulty and then crawl along the floor in an intricate, regressive path of discovery.
Nacho Carbonell, The bench, from the Evolution collection, 2009. Photo credits: Studio Nacho Carbonell.