Matteo Cibic, Italian ceramic expert designer, on display in Montelupo Fiorentino

One of the capitals of ceramics meets one of the most visionary and appreciated Italian designers of the new generation. From Nov. 30, 2019, to Jan. 26, 2020, Palazzo Podestarile in Montelupo Fio rentino (Florence) will host a solo exhibition by Matteo Cibic (1983), whose career bears witness to a strong tangency with ceramics that has led him to create several collections of iconic, easily recognizable objects. The exhibition, titled Paradiso Dreams, promoted by the Fondazione Museo Montelupo, with the contribution of the Region of Tuscany in the regional program Toscanaincontemporanea2019, curated by Silvana Annicchiarico, presents a selection of ceramic works among Matteo Cibic’s most significant and innovative ones.

“This exhibition,” says Silvana Annicchiarico, “wants to stimulate a short circuit between the great artisanal tradition of Montelupese ceramics and the dreamlike, fantastic and surreal imagery of a young designer with an intimately contemporary gaze as Matteo Cibic is. Intensifying the relations and relationships between different languages and traditions, between ancient and modern, between real and fantastic, between functional and playful: I believe this is the most fruitful way to promote innovation and research today in the culturally and economically fertile territory that lies at the crossroads of art, craftsmanship and design.”

The exhibition itinerary is divided into several stages, each of which houses a different project, the result of a specific vision, which generated a different collection each time.

The heart of the exhibition is the Montelupo section, a series of never-before-seen objects made especially for this appointment with the Laboratorio Ceramiche d’Arte Dolfi of Ivana Antonini, one of the best-known ceramists in the area, with the aim of reinterpreting, enhancing and innovating the great Montelupese tradition.

The exhibition opens with Animagic, a kind of imaginary bestiary, populated by fantastic animals made of 24-karat gold-plated ceramics, and continues with Dermapoliesis, a series of plants and organic forms in ceramics, preserved under glass bells capable of ideally preserving their appearance in order to transmit them to posterity. These are prototypes that embody an idea of what plants might look like in the future, capable of generating perfumes, cookies, knitwear. A kind of utopia of the future in which flora and fauna will self-produce processed materials to meet the various needs of humans.

The exhibition also testifies to the designer’s extreme eclecticism through the Luce Naga project, sinuous golden ceramic lights inspired by Indian typography. The path continues with the Domsai section, desk tamagochi made up of cacti placed under blown glass bells and placed on ceramic legs, and then flows into the fantasy world of Vasonaso, a series of works that reinterpret in an ironic key the everyday, bordering on obsession, of Giorgio Morandi and his still lifes filled with vases, bottles and glasses. The Vasonaso project leads Matteo Cibic to create a collection of 365 vases, one per day, each with a nose-shaped appendage. Like Morandi’s bottles, his vases are united by somatic or color characteristics and can be grouped by genealogical strains. “Each vase,” Cibic believes, “hides a nose, which makes it unique, gives it a defined personality and becomes the instrument of relationship with other vases.”

This is a real journey into Matteo Cibic’s surreal and metaphysical dreams amplified by the scenographic set-up he designed.

The Catalogue published by All’Insegna del Giglio brings together for the first time all of Matteo Cibic’s ceramic work through unpublished photographs and numerous drawings.

Matteo Cibic is an Italian designer and creative director. He is known for creating objects that are characterized by their hybrid functions and anthropomorphic, irony-laden forms. He works both using industrial processes and alongside small artisans; his works are produced for luxury brands, collectors and hi-tech companies.

He has exhibited in Italian and international museums such as the Musée Pompidou in Paris, the Shanghai Museum of Glass, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, the Mudac - Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne, as well as in events such as the Saint Étienne Design Biennale, Venice International Art Biennale, and in galleries such as Rossana Orlandi in Milan, Mint Gallery in London, Seeds Gallery in London, Secondome Gallery in Rome, Le Mill in Mumbai, Superego in Asti.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Montelupo Museum Foundation.

Pictured: Matteo Cibic, “The Paradise of Dreams” Collection, Princess

Source: release

Matteo Cibic, Italian ceramic expert designer, on display in Montelupo Fiorentino

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