Eliana Lorena with Aiko Onose

SARTORIA BASSANI |

via Cesare Correnti 11  Milan |  17-22 april 2012

photo: Francesco Buzzo

My room: a space closed on the 'floating world'. There are many fragments of memories in Eliana Lorena's choice for the homage to the room she dedicates to Japan, as a designer specialized in surfaces and textiles. My room is not an exhibition space, it is a point of arrival where you can deposit objects and thoughts created, subjectively archived, in the long journey, travel and study of the oriental lands. It is a set of real facts and products, but also a dreamlike gesture of energy, supported by many inspirations that arise within the very thought of Asia up to land in Japan, within the iconography, the set of signs that remain in the thought of anyone who dedicates himself to design in Italy, after knowing that culture . On the one hand, there are affinities that affect the whole world of design and fashion, even in the design of fabrics, in which the '900 is rationality, cleanliness, linearity, restriction in the use of color. On the other, there is a kind of enchantment from total estrangement for the contrast of the historical artistic tradition between our cultures: an elegant, essential, Zen simplicity, coming from the past of Japan, and the richness in color and exuberance of forms, of the three-dimensional material in the production of art from Giotto onwards of the West. The grammar of the bow, which is imparted in a fragile room of wood and rice paper, is a source of divergent inspiration. A closed set that comes to life in a separate story, perfect but mysterious or openly imaginary as in a colorful cartoon and merciless. They are two sets of facts and motivations so broad that they can find a settlement in the representation of thought only by going in depth, with a magnifying glass to discover complicated textures of a simple design, a 'macro' photograph of the texture of a fabric of a minute yukata, or an extreme fantasy stolen from Hokusai, an immense landscape gathered in a surimono. My room is a haiku of representation of feminine separateness and dream of beauty in a space closed to drama, a cultural effort sought in oriental culture that recommends the serenity of a moment and harmony and, instead, has given us the perfection of 'asymmetry.

Rietta Messina

guest

Maurizio Peregalli and Nicoletta Baucia for Zeus furnishings | Gobbetto for the floor | Cinius per

tatami | Zucchi for the duvet | Bruno Munari, James Irvine, Naoto Fukasawa

for objects Danese | Enzo Mari for the calendar Nava | Gentili and Mosconi for the shibory |

Adele-C for the blanket | Nava for the N_bag | Luceplan for lamps Costanzina |

Italian laboratory for ceramics | Mattel per Unico. |

Eurojersey for fabrics, design Eliana Lorena |