Exhibition Details

On the occasion of Nilufar’s Milan Design Week, Analogia Project’s Andrea Mancuso presents Acquario, the latest collection investigating the transposition of the natural world to the domestic. Working with ceramic and glass, Mancuso recreates an artificial oceanographic landscape within the confines of Milan’s Nilufar Depot. The collection, which will debut during Milan Design Week in June 2022, is composed of a side table, grand dining table, lighting, a console and wall mirror, all of which resemble fictitious species of corals and invented aquatic plant life.
Building on the language first explored in Mancuso’s 2019 Metamorphosis project made in collaboration with French champagne house Perrier-Jouët and presented at Design Miami/ each object is composed of an undulating skin of mounted ceramic discs. In designing the discs, Mancuso took an almost alchemical approach. Ranging in shade from indigo blue to turquoise green, the discs’ mottled coloring, meant to evoke the skin of imagined aquatic flora, is derived from chemical reactions that take place whilst being fired. Working in collaboration with Ceramiche Sottosasso in the town of Faenza, they spent months researching these processes, which inevitably introduced an element of uncertainty to the production as each singular disc emerges from the kiln with its own unique patina. Mancuso also worked with artisans to fabricate the tables’ glass surfaces. Panes of blue-tinted glass are placed atop soil and melted down to conform to the rough earth. Up close, the bubbling effect resembles the frothy surface of a restless sea.
“With Acquario, I wanted to explore the idea of bringing the natural world into the domestic landscape. In the same way that one introduces an object like an aquarium or terrarium into the home, I played with the idea of extracting nature from its original context. The shapes of the objects are not literal recreations of living organisms, but rather are meant to evoke the artificial nature of these confined habitats.”