PENADES

Looks Like Magic! is my first solo show in Italy curated by Maria Cristina Didero. Produced by 5 Vie, this new body of work was presented during the Milan Design Week 2021.

As the nature how we work and live is always changing, the Spanish designer Jorge Penadés managed to modify the very spirit of a singular material. Penadés is challenging the chosen material and at the same time he is challenging himself. Not surprising as if you look at Penadés office´s  website you can read at the very end of its homepage, “Penadés is an office for heterodox ideas” – which is something I consider trigging.

In recent times change became crucial, and currently more than ever – not to mention the unprecedented times we have just experienced with the pandemic. It turns out to be incredibly important that we trial how we do things in another possible way, while looking for real alternative positions and different visions to face tomorrow social, environmental and economical engagements – being them related to art, design or architecture. Our planet is screaming so it befalls natural and logical to look at sustainability before acting in any kind of creative field. It is possible to do this exercise by keeping an eye on sustainability, without repressing inventiveness.

Even if there was a bubble of recycled, new materials made out of left-overs – which we salute as healthy! – we believe that experimentations in this direction are never enough, and there is still a huge space for original and undiscovered developments. When Earth will benefit, we will benefit.

The project LOOKS LIKE MAGIC! not only combines man imaginative power with low-impact technologies, but it also involves a considerable amount of man-energy in acting. I used the word “exercise” as this vigorous exercise comes from real practice, research and experimentation, from trial and errors. It does not come out of the blue, it is not magic.

LOOKS LIKE MAGIC! comprises a performance by the designer and a performance by the sourced material. It is a mutual strength.

Considering that inspiration comes from working – and Penadés will be actually working pretty hard, hands on, live on site – the project LOOKS LIKE MAGIC! intends to emphasize the transformation of a waste material of a certain typology (namely textile) into something totally different per DNA, texture and consistence (namely clay). Plus, finding a way to do it.

Specifically, we are exploring the transformation from waste textile to textile powder, and from powder to clay. But not only, we are also stretching the traditional idea of crafting both materials, textile and clay as well as exploring how much Penadés can exercise his imagination and body during the whole performance. This results actually in an unpredictable work-in-progress deed, which leaves a certain degree of fortuity – which is something that we enjoy a lot!

All of us should be focused. Recycling goes hand in hand with innovation and the exploration of ideas to scout new possible techniques and procedures to make and produce. Here we combine this flame for a change with highlighting the force of human being – and his original twist, within this specific given context. Jorge Penadés plunges himself again into a project about rethinking a whole system, in order not only to explore this position to the fullest, but also test himself.

Performative exhibition. How does it work: the more instinctive it becomes, the more imaginative it becomes, the more designed it becomes. The project starts in an empty space, with the designer starting to create objects according to his original process, which translate textile waste into Textile-Clay. And Textile- Clay into objects thanks to an old method of working, such as pottery wheel.

Day by day, what we will have as a result is a room full of Textile-Clay objects in various sizes, that altogether create a unique language diversified in different typologies – from small accessories to bigger pieces of furniture such as stool, for example. As mentioned, fortuity plays a relevant role on this exercise, but skills and dynamism and energy will do the same. All the pieces will be unique, of course – as they are produced in a peculiar and not replicable way.

The utopian ideal scenario will be to begin the project with an empty space, and through the designer’s work (5 full days) filling up the room with objects and come back to the original state of emptiness by getting rid of them all by the end of the week. But it is not only about this; we would put on the table the idea of a project that starts from waste material, create a new one and leaving not left over at all.

Text by Maria Cristina Didero.