Sergio Breviario The unexpected and exceptional circumstance that escapes the rule is what specifically interests Sergio Breviario. A single line of perspective, for example, allows us to perceive that - if ideally placed on the vanishing point that stretches out to infinity - the lines do not diverge but are parallel. It is an exception, a unique case that Breviario has recently re-elaborated in an environment composed of drawings, sculptures and an installation. His work is not only versatile in its choice of expressive media, but also develops in keeping with the praxis and modes of a “saga”. The point of arrival of a work necessarily coincides with the starting point of the next, in a logical, methodical process that always tends to be based on what has been defined as the “logic of delirium”. Being delirious means, in fact, to stray from the tilled furrow, the lira, venturing into untilled, uncultivated ground. To cultivate such spheres requires an excess of rationality rather than its absence. This is why the artist develops the logic of “over-inclusion”: every thing, every aspect, every detail, formal or conceptual, must respond to a rigorous determinism that does not permit error or randomness. Sergio Breviario graduated from the Brera Fine Arts Academy . He lives and works in Milan.

by Milovan Farronato

Luca Trevisani’s work constantly suggests a principle of socialization and the consequent gauging of relational tensions. Through performance, video and installations, the artist seeks to allow a “force” to express itself. This implies one of the most typical results of each of his pieces: underlining the instability of things, the point of delicate imbalance and balance. He creates sidereal images and vibrations that should enter into “sympathy” with the passer-by, with those willing to observe and interact.
Movement, creation of energy, passages between physical states, from solid to liquid, are favorite areas of investigation for Trevisani, who intends to push communication towards pre-rational reasoning. He is not interested in the world of symbols or archetypes: his sculptures endure their shape with uncertainty (often in a state of becoming); they display themselves as abstract figures and define fields of mechanic relations. Luca Trevisani was born in Verona in 1979. He lives and works in Milan and Berlin. He recently won the Premio Furla for Art.

by Milovan Farronato

Simone Tosca was born in Cortemaggiore (Piacenza) in 1974. He lives and works in Milan. His research is rigorously aniconic, almost iconoclastic. Whether expressed as painting, sculpture or sound (an area in which he has been working since 2002), his purpose is always to experiment by starting with customary forms deeply imprinted in the collective imagination, using them to discover a visual unity that reaches toward territories where images lose their usual meaning and become open to non-symbolic, anti-narrative interpretation. This could be about pushing communication towards a pre-rational language, towards a more complex vision, clearly aesthetic but perhaps also more profound in nature.

by Milovan Farronato

Atrium-Project is a collective formed in 2002 from collaboration between Claudia Dallagiovanna and Riccardo Arena. Without taking itself too seriously, Atrium-Project ironically depicts the celebration of the everyday dimension, using an iconography from “how-to instruction manuals”. Through videos, hand-painted ceramics and installations, the work narrates places characterized by abnormal immobility and a sense of expectation, as if something inevitable is about to happen from one moment to the next. A domestic Armageddon where a glass falling into fragments could have the same emotional intensity as the destruction of the solar system.

by Milovan Farronato

Milan: a definitely not easy, chaotic and demanding town. Becoming a creative fashion designer is a considerable personal challenge here, because you are competing with a well-structured system, which means nobody will take it for granted that you are any good and everything you produce must be outstanding. Nevertheless it’s a positive thing for young designers just to be part of such a vast landscape of facilities such as workshops, fashion shows, and journalists ready to help any talented creative folk to actually get started.

Amaterasu. A brand of shoes designed by the creative hands of Marco Censi and Guillaume Hinfray, Milanese by adoption. Experimental creations with new materials, forms and decorative techniques. Considered among the most interesting young footwear designers on the Italian scene. Their brand is sold through La Vetrina di Beryl in via Statuto 4. www.amaterasu.it

“We have come to Milan for quite opposite reasons. From the province of Rome, ever since the 1980s Milan has been a natural destination for me; at that time the town was growing as the capital of creative design. And I immediately fell in love with it: quieter than Rome and Paris, less attractive but more dynamic, it has everything you can possibly need to be a successful business without becoming stressed out or losing the human touch thereby making it possible to enjoy personal relationships with everyone”.

Gentucca Bini. She is in fact a qualified architect who grew up in a fashion-oriented family, including a grand mother named Bruna Bini, a designer with her own atelier in via Montenapoleone in the 1960s, who worked with such artists as Fontana, Baj and Pomodoro. She has recently produced her own collection and is now designing for the Romeo Gigli brand name. Her shop and atelier are centrally located in via Pantano 17. 

“Creating fashion is as difficult here as elsewhere. The problem is inside the system. Standards are by now set very high. Milan is very stimulating and is the only town in Italy where creative expressions get an answer. My method? Never stop working, working and working... But to do this from outside the system and remain there until people realize that you exist. Milan has great incentives, but by principle nobody goes out of their way to help, not even when you have been discovered. It’s all a matter of personal contacts and drive, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer”.

Celeste All That. Although quite young, she has already worked at the style offices of Costume National, Blumarine, Moschino and started her own line in 2006. A romantic, humorous style, almost for bunny girls. But top quality and precious. For characters who want to show off. www.celesteallthat.com

“I feel great sorrow for those who have to leave Milan if they are to work in the fashion industry. To me, what you need here is good and strong personal relations. In this way my promotion has become self-promotion: make oneself known and invest, also in terms of character. You need determination as well as hard work and organization, not only research: often creative designers lose themselves in contemplation and sophisms. Milan requires realism, energy and vital optimism if you are to succeed”.

Roberto Musso. A minimalist and romantic poet, capable of creating emotion with imperfections, jocular and babyish prints. Soft dolls, sweet icons, all with soft shapes, lines that are often undefined, asymmetries, inlaid works. A native of Vigevano, in 2001 he opened a loft-atelier at via Vannucci and from there he excites people with his collections of hand-painted fabrics and hand-made decorated suits: abstract and natural designs, flowers and leaves, folds and asymmetric segments. The collection is sold through one shop: Marika in via G. Morelli 1.

“Milan in general spells traffic and negative rhythms. There is a lot of business, but not so much creativity. People may be curious of course, but then they do their actual shopping in the provinces or abroad, where shops are really innovative. Outside the fashion quadrilateral, Milan has little personality, nothing new and few initiatives that succeed, due to its high cost structure. Small businesses can survive thanks to Japanese buyers.  The city has a virtual reputation, I don’t believe it is the capital of fashion. Very little of the creativity that passes through Milan stays here, one simply does business very quickly, then moves on again because it is very expensive and not very open”.

Rohka is the brand name of Maria Restropo from Colombia and Ian Phin from Scotland who, after working in Paris and London, arrived in Milan separately in the early 1990s to work with Romeo Gigli. Subsequently they worked in the design offices of Versace and Marni. Their joint collection is on sale at Biffi’s in corso Genova 6. www.rohka.com

Achille Castiglioni, Vico Magistretti, Bruno Munari, Marco Zanuso: the great masters of Italian design. They have all passed away during the course of the last decade. For many years, along with their surviving colleagues Ettore Sottsass and Enzo Mari, they determined the course of design. They were the first to make Italian design a familiar, famous presence around the world. Their immediate successors also included a number of fundamental figures for the history of Italian design. The generations overlap, so dividing design history up into segments or phases is not an easy task. Just try to position someone like Joe Colombo, who died young, on the map; or Cini Boeri and Gae Aulenti, the great ladies of Italian design. Nevertheless, the six talents mentioned above can be considered masters of the first generation, not only because of their dates of birth, but also due to the continuity and importance of their work and its influence. Design has changed over the years, in parallel with economic, sociological and cultural changes. The companies, products and designers have multiplied. The phenomenon is no longer limited to Italy, but takes place on an international scale. But in Italy, and especially in Milan, design plays a particular role, so the death of the great masters becomes a moment for reflection: what will be lost and what will remain? How has the world of design changed, and how will it change in the future? What will the era after the great historical masters be like (or what is it like already)? We asked some experts to answer these questions. They seem to agree that there is no longer room for “masters”, and that the legacy that remains is perhaps not as substantial as it looks. But their reasoning and predictions are varied.

Miki Astori, designer, born in Milan in 1965. Degree in architecture, studio in Milan since 1995. He works on product design, interior design and architecture. Expert on materials, craftsmanship and industrial production methods, explored during extensive travels in Europe, India and Asia.
www.mikiastori.com

The masters were masters in the 1960s and 1970s. That was their golden age. This is why I think we have already been in the next phase for some time. Back then it was virgin territory, today it’s anything but. There’s an overload of designers in Milan today. Everybody’s a designer, we all design but we don’t change things much. And not just in Milan. This is a global, worldwide phenomenon.
The developing nations like India and China also want to have creative talents. Because when a society becomes more complex, the need arises for images, signs. The new masters can only appear in countries like these, today. If you think about it, the period of the masters in Italy was that of the postwar economic boom.
I wouldn’t worry about the future of design just because the great masters are disappearing; that would be like worrying about cinema because the great neorealist directors are all gone... Today we have everything, and that’s why we don’t need masters, unlike the countries where everything still needs inventing, thanks to rapid economic growth. The future? There will be professionals, they will be less famous, they will learn their craft by studying in good design schools. Design will no longer be so important, or to put it more precisely, it will be taken for granted. There is no more room for genius.

Bruno Fattorini, design entrepreneur, was born in Domodossola in 1939. After studying economics he worked in the furniture industry before acquiring MDF Italia in 1992, a company whose products stand out for their simple lines and research on materials. He is president of the company, its art director and the designer of many of its products. www.mdf.it

What comes after the masters?
Nothing, unless Milan can to some extent remain a place where ideas can become reality, a place where taste, the right cultural conditions and the capacity for discussion still survive. In recent years the new ideas have come from other countries, like Holland and Belgium. I’m thinking about Droog Design or the school of Eindhoven. It is partially a problem connected to education. Italian university-level design training is insufficient, so our designers are less and less capable of interpreting their times. I like to work with the foreigners, I think they are better at coming up with responses to change, they are not so burdened by the design of the 1950s and 1960s. To get results you have to invent new answers, and here in Italy that’s not happening.
Antonio Citterio and Piero Lissoni are the most successful designers in Italy today, and their work represents precisely the kind of styling that is in demand. The ideas are all similar, derived from each other... We so rarely see any different products that when it happens consumers tend to overestimate their value; this is why I think it is possible to take risks today. For the future, I’m pessimistic about Italy; more and more foreign designers will come here to work, from elsewhere in Europe. I don’t think the growth countries like China and India can make a big design contribution; the cultural differences are too big.

Loredana Mascheroni, journalist, born in Varese in 1962. Degree in Foreign Languages and Modern Literature from the State University of Milan. She began her career working for commercial television, and in 1989 she began to work in print in the furnishings sector. Since 1997 she has been the vice-editor-in-chief of Domus.

The age of the masters finished some time ago. In recent times they have continued to work, but their names are used like brands, because the situation has changed; their later works no longer have the social role and impact of their earlier efforts.
We’ve come a long way since then. Their era was a time of specific conditions: the economic boom, industrial growth, an enthusiastic view of the future. Even if such personalities exist today, the market will not let them emerge. The economics are different, everything is based on cost reduction. Big corporations acquire design companies that began as family businesses. This means that behind companies you no longer find individuals with clear ideas, but boards of directors, management teams, etc. This phenomenon leads to uniformity of products, but paradoxically the greatest success on the market goes precisely to the big corporations. Styling rules. Successful designers like Citterio and Lissoni, but also Morrison, work by reviving forms, re-designing, because this is the space set aside for design to move today. This is also why I’m not optimistic about the future. Another phenomenon is the small scale: lots of little objects are being produced, almost trinkets. But on that scale you cannot come to grips with any really important issues...
Some designers of the new generations, like Gabriele Pezzini, are looking for new formulae. They invent interesting cultural operations, but they have limited exposure and can operate only in micro-markets.

Massimo Morozzi, designer and art director of Edra, born in Florence in 1941. Degree in architecture. Member of the historic avant-garde design group Archizoom. Studio in Milan since 1982, working in the areas of product design, interiors and consumer goods, in collaboration with many companies. He has taught in many international schools. www.edra.com

Like Mendini, I belong to the generation in between the new designers and the great masters. The masters were our points of reference until the mid-1980s. Since then we’ve been in the post-master phase, and some important things have happened. First and foremost, more and more foreigners are doing design, starting with Philippe Starck. This has brought new energy and cultural enrichment. Design has become international, though the model of its production and communication is still Italian. As art director of Edra I work with many foreign designers. In the future designers will be younger and more international, also thanks to the many design schools. While my generation studied architecture - a form of training that Vico Magistretti defined as humanistic - today there are thousands of young people specifically studying design around the world. I’ve visited excellent schools in South America, in South Africa... the numbers are impressive. This implies that while in the past there were a few recognized personalities, today they are many more. It’s like white noise, you can’t distinguish individuals. The influence of the masters can be seen in the history of design, in books, but not in a direct way. Today everything tends to look the same, because the same information circulates everywhere, from magazines to the Internet. Another new factor is the focus on small projects, the small scale, but without any relationship with furniture or the city. Everything gets designed today: eyeglasses, fragrances, zippers. Design covers new areas, like food, for example. In the future it will be increasingly connected with marginal, curious aspects. Young people with the same kind of training will design everything. Personally, I feel optimistic about the future.

Gregorio Spini, entrepreneur in the lighting sector, born in Milan in 1958. He came to the field of design after working in art, theater and writing. In 1996 he founded Kundalini, a company that stands out for the strong expressive image of its products. He creates products with the Kundalinidesign brand.
www.kundarinidesign.com

Gak got here in 1991 and practically hasn’t left since. Keyboards, electronics, theremin. As a music producer, after his debut with Post-Echo he launched Temposphere, the contemporary music label of Right Tempo Records in Milan.
How did he meet Steve? “By chance… we played one gig together and that was the start of our expeditions”. The splendid CD Expedition, featuring Gak with Steve and Luca Gemma, in 2004, is a record of electronics, samples of melodies from the past, sounds stolen from the city. The street as a stage.
“Nobody sings in the street anymore. Concerts are the only moments of musical semi-participation. Making music and singing is in our DNA, it’s a part of everyone, from kids to fishmongers. But school makes kids hate to sing,” Steve says. “You hear lots of complaining about noise in this city, but there’s really a lot of repression everybody wants to sing but the rules impose silence or approved sounds.”