The world of ceramic coatings is going through an exciting time. On the one hand, there is the evolution of printing technologies, which have entered a new era with digital printing. On the other hand, the evolution of tastes has brought back the public’s desire for colourful and textured environments.
Flicker, an indoor wallcovering designed for M+ by the young designer Simone Bonanni (born in 1989), goes in this direction, but in its own way, working by subtraction, without putting emotion aside.
The collection is all based on a simple, almost banal graphic gesture: it starts with a mark on a ceramic tile and multiplies like a cell that reproduces itself by mitosis. The result is a pattern that is never the same, that defines the space, that blends in with the environment, that characterises it in a discreet but powerful way.
The basic element is a 20 x 20 mm square tile with a small rectangle hollowed out in its centre. During laying, the impression is filled with the same grout as the joints and the design is thus completed.
“I am interested in movement, in vibration. I focused exclusively on the design of the individual artefact, aware that a graphic sign on a tile, especially if minimal or almost imperceptible, would cascade a general pulsation,” explains the designer.
Bonanni, who teaches product design at the IED – Istituto Europeo di Design – in Milan alongside his work as a designer, is no stranger to such operations: in 2019 he designed for Alessi and Hansa Kandinsky, a faucet conceived as a sculpture; and this year, for Weed’D, two objects linked to the (difficult) world of smoking bringing it into the world of decoration for display, thus moving away from the classic object/use binomial. An attitude that makes him one of the most titled representatives of the Italian design nouvelle vague.
