Italian designers Draga & Aurel entered Visionnaire’s Wunderkammer, the art gallery located within the Italian brand’s flagship store in Milan, with Narrazioni Intrecciate. The installation at Fuorisalone for Milan Design Week 2024 was conceived as a game of role exchanges between art and design, where colours and artistic manifestations adorn the walls guiding the viewers through the immersive installation, among collectible design objects. “I worked for a long time as a textile designer in fashion and fabrics are my first love: it was natural to imagine bringing Aurel’s works onto fabric, so powerful and with kinetic force,” says Draga Obradovic.

In a special edition, Visionnaire’s Aries armchair is upholstered with a new woven fabric that reinterprets Aurel K. Basedow’s paintings. The material presents the typical signs of Aurel’s paintings and it is characterised by different heights of the fabric, creating a pleasant tactile and visual contrast. The Muse screen speaks of the layering intrinsic to the artist in his creative process, against the backdrop of printed organza. Research is a fundamental aspect of Draga & Aurel’s creative journey and for this project, they revisited two of their iconic pieces with interweaving new materials. The Lego console is reintroduced with a marble top associated with metal replacing the concrete used in the previous model, while the Elysium table, an explicit reference to the Amos dining table, offers contrasting geometries and refined textures. Completing the installation is the Tessa room divider: a cascade of colours that seem to dissolve among interweaving geometries, lights and transparencies.

In an exclusive conversation with STIR, Eleonore Cavalli, art director and co-Founder, Visionnaire, talks about the inspirations that honed the design installation, the harmonious juxtaposition of art and design and what the project stands for.

STIR: Please take us through the conceptualisation of Narrazioni Intrecciate.

Eleonore Cavalli: The designer duo Draga & Aurel enter Visionnaire’s Wunderkammer with an intertwined narrative: a game of role exchanges between art and design, where the power of colours and painterly gestures illuminates the walls guiding the immersive journey among collectible design objects. Narrazioni Intrecciate also symbolises the intertwined work between the designer couple.

STIR: What, according to you, is the relationship between art and design? How do they come together in the installation?

Eleonore: We were drawn into realising the project by the fact that Draga Obradovic specialises in design while Aurel K Basedow is a painter. Together they share both their professional and private lives. We have known them for many years now and when we visualise the relationship between art and design we think of them and their aesthetics. We appreciate the way they perceive art projects in communication with artefacts.

STIR: What determined the choice of products included in Narrazioni Intrecciate?

Eleonore: The site-specific project for the Wunderkammer speaks the language of light and colours. A journey in a muffled blue-marine atmosphere to discover a capsule of collectible design objects. We thought of reinventing some pieces designed by Draga and Aurel which are a part of our existing collection such as the Lego console in marble and metal and the Aries armchairs, by redesigning them in new finishes. We then presented a series of new objects designed for the occasion, the Elysium table with contrasting geometries and refined textures, the Muse screen and the Tessa room divider.

STIR: What was the brief given to Draga & Aurel to reimagine their previous collectible objects?

Eleonore: The abstractions and colours of Aurel's paintings guided the personalisation of the objects on display. The Aries armchairs are covered with a new loom-woven jacquard fabric that reinterprets his paintings. In the Muse screen, however, Aurel's painting is composed and decomposed: the stratification, dear to the artist in his creative process, is entrusted to a play of printed organzas which in movement seems to reproduce the gesture of painting. Even the nuances of the colours that make up the plexiglass tiles of the Tessa divider take inspiration from Aurel's work and seem to dissolve between intertwining geometries, lights and transparencies.

STIR: Textile and fabric appear to be central to the project. Tell us how that came out to be for Narrazioni Intrecciate?

Eleonore: Draga comes from the world of fashion with experience in the textile design sector and a deep knowledge of fabrics. It was natural for her to translate Aurel's works so powerfully and with kinetic force onto fabric.

STIR: What did the brand want the installation to express or communicate?

Eleonore: We like to convey the strength of creativity and beauty in every project we create, a tribute to the expressive freedom and talent of artists and artisans with whom we are lucky enough to collaborate.