Divine inspiration: Surrealist undertones on show in Milan

Milan – A vision of heaven and hell was today unveiled in the Brera Design District of Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan 2014. Designers including Bethan Laura Wood, Anton Alvarez and François Dumas created one-off pieces from textile brand Kvadrat's Divina fabric.

As the spiritual name suggests, the mood was light and uplifting with pieces such as Richard Huttens’ curvaceous Cloud Chair and Gonçalo Campos’ Meeting a Lot, Meeting a Little hanging, umbrella canopy. Forms were soft and warm with surrealist compositions.

But downstairs there was a very different feel. Jerszy Seymour’s The Council for the Progenesis of the Archaic Festival showed the designer savaging 10 rolls of charcoal grey fabric with a chainsaw. The process was shown on film in the dank basement, beside the aftermath: an installation, depicting the attack.

‘We realised when we saw Jerszy’s work that it would need to be displayed in a different space to highlight the contrast with the other works,’ curator of the exhibition Njusja de Gier, told LS:N Global.

For more on lightness and darkness in consumer culture, read our macrotrend The Polarity Paradox.