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cc-tapis at supersalone and fuorisalone

September 10, 2021

A trio of artist designers lasso the sky and shapes that fly and guide them to earth as three new cc-tapis collections

Celebrations of ten years of cc-tapis continue at supersalone and cc-tapis’ showroom on Piazza Santo Stefano where new rug collections from Patricia Urquiola, Muller van Severen and Edoardo Piermattei reveal revelatory translations of three-dimensional concepts into tactile weave and technique. Contributions from several creatives in multiple disciplines contribute to the multi-sensorial experience ‘We all come from Venus’ at the showroom.

cc-tapis use the word ‘turbulence’ to refer to the past eighteen months; a word that figuratively disempowers COVID-19 and underscores their renewed energy and the power of their ‘proactive attitude’ in the face of global adversity. This positive and welcome outlook led to ‘new outlets for creativity’ and cc-tapis’ three new collaborative collections. 

Venus Power collection by Patricia Urquiola for cc tapis Photo Claudia Zalla

Patricia Urquiola returns for her sixth collection with cc-tapis. Venus Power is her ‘free, strong and joyful’ manifesto to encourage everyone to embrace their femininity. Four hand-knotted designs (Weallcomefromvenus, Nuvola, Cirrus and Venus) available in pink, blue and green, are cloud-like shapes filled with swirls of colour. Bold black outlines define the rug perimeters, while curved black strokes create cumulus cloud shapes within the rug field. Weallcomefromvenus includes five letters from the rug’s title ‘hidden’ in the black outlines. Urquiola acknowledges her allusion to graffiti art. The current resurgence of interest in classic tagging and graffiti is reflected in Urquiola’s shapes which echo the outlined ‘softie’ and ‘bubble cloud’ tags made famous by Bronx graffiti artist Phase2 which covered New York subway cars in the 1970s and 80s. 

Ombra collection by Muller Van Severen for cc tapis Photo Claudia Zalla

Available in two designs (Ombra and Ombra Block) and monochromatic and polychromatic palettes, Ombra by Muller van Severen is ‘an experiment with shadow, where objects and the imagination float or even fly.’ The trompe l’oeil 3D illusion of flat shapes that seem to hover is created by perspective, shadow and the selection of Himalayan wool and pure silk that work in tandem to enhance the illusion. The apparent simplicity of the Muller van Severen illusion is similar to the quiet qualities of the Veronicas by British photographer John Stewart (1919-2017), but where Stewart relied on textile folds and ironed creases to create a dialogue with the viewer, the deliberate flatness of the rectilinear shapes in Ombra rely on the precision of the pile and the preciseness of the shapes to create the illusion the shapes have floated from the sky to hover softly just above the rug’s surface. 

Dagallà collection by Edoardo Piermattei for cc tapis Photo Claudia Zalla

Edoardo Piermattei looks up as well as down for the inspiration behind the two designs (Formation 1 and Formation 2) in his Dagallà collection. Oppositional ideas—eastern and western cultures, sky and landscape, up and down—are integrated by the artist into ‘dagallà’—his ‘cartographic perspective’ that allows him to find ‘the possibility of creating new formations’ from the surface of a rug. Piermattei was invited to take part in The Italian Villages project to revive moribund villages through reimagining dwellings as site-specific art installations. Piermattei’s contribution to Casa Panitteri in Sambuca, Sicily was a ceiling fresco created with pigmented mortars and the frescoed underside of a four poster bed’s hard-sided tester. ‘The material becomes a mantle that holds and contains’, he explains; a belief captured in Formation 1 and 2 where each design echoes his process at Casa Panitteri. His textural, colourful frescoes are translated with hand-knotted wool and flipped so they are observed and experienced from above rather than from below. Piermattei considers Dagallà ‘a symbol of coexistence between past and present, between before and after that responds to the urge to express shapes, colors and languages on the surface of a rug’.

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