10 April 2014

Wire is a line of containers that fits neatly into the contemporary tendency known as retro-futurism, a fusion of memories of the past and present-day identities that looks to the future. Alessandro Zambelli has created for Seletti a collection that has its roots in history, building an ideal bridge with Central European Jugendstil and in particular the great exponents of the Vienna Secession. In fact the steel panels of these cabinets, consoles and bureaus are painted in the pastel colors of Josef Hoffmann and have the brass profiles of Otto Wagner. An allusion to a time when decoration was used to emphasize elements of the structure, underlining perimeters, edges and joints whose functional role was embellished with noble materials. A marking of the boundaries that shows how every three-dimensional volume stems, at bottom, from the union of flat surfaces. In this sense the name wire refers both to the metal profile that characterizes these pieces of furniture and to Ariadne’s thread that takes us back to the turn of the 19th century, when objects began to be conceived in a contemporary way for mass production, without renouncing the preciousness of detail. Where: Spazio Rossana Orlandi, Via Matteo Bandello 14-16.