MATRICE

Matrice: note sulla collezione | Matrice: notes on the collection

of material – accurately interpreted (with shade variation) on the basis

of an assortment of various types – to restore visual elegance and a

fundamental severity.

Attention to scale is another architectural feature: Matrice offers

modules with architectural dimensions and different sizes through the

development of “large slabs”, eliminating the visual regular grid effect.

Thanks to this visual reset, geographic forms are perceived to

emerge from dense, grey concrete surfaces decorated as in bygone days

by special processes and by weathering during drying.

The various types of slab, each an atlas of subtle, vibrant signs

on the surfaces, comprise finishes that reproduce the visual effect of

reinforced concrete – with the aggregates in the cement more clearly

visible, of formwork – with the signs impressed on the concrete by the

timber used, of a structured surface resembling bare cement plaster, of

ridged and streaked surfaces – with patterning resembling some kinds of

linear surface finishing processes – and finally a smooth, or basic version,

over which Matrice exercises the dichotomy referred to earlier.

It is on these surfaces that Brondi and Rainò have imagined

additional design reverberations, a figurative code that rejects the

concept of the grid, previously inseparable from that of the module: by

means of a vocabulary of graphic marks cut into the slabs with a depth

of 3 mm (the width of the gap left between modules during installation),

they provide a framework for infinite combinations of possible dialogues.

Just as in embroidery, which is based on grids of stitches and

geometric repetitions, and where every stitch is at right-angles to

another one to construct forms and decorations. Also taken from

embroidery is the idea of introducing a degree of “softness” to reduce

the stiffness of intentionally deaf surfaces. There is the impression of

patterns that can continue for infinity, as in textile weaving, and a scale

that, unlike the surface being worked on, is imagined as suspended and

lightweight. They may not admit it, but BRH+ know a lot about music,

including electronic music, and it appears to me that this organised

tangle of infinite signs – unidentifiable without an overview – is rather like

the representations of synthesized sounds. Sounds that are produced by

machines, and thus “woven” by sampling and overlapping sounds of the

most unlikely origins, combined to form jingles which, once heard, are

imprinted indelibly on the brain. This may be why I am so interested in

the space between this “melodic film” and its deaf, damp substrate. The

eyes can navigate this suspended reality without fear of disturbance.

So we are faced with different surfaces, different sizes and different

graphic signs. But only one colour (surprise!) to prevent a cacophony not

just of signs but also of possible interpretations:

the artists retain their radical principles (and their generosity),

and as curators, a role in which they are skilled, they leave the players

(architects and installers) to add their own interpretations. In their hands

this colour, expressed in Matrice, will produce motifs on surfaces in living

spaces for someone else. This stylish covering and its workmanship

will be left to the hands of someone who will probably never read this,

but will be on a building site, with the radio playing on a stereo system,

concentrating on installing the very pieces we describe. So a radical,

apparently silent, design project like this has repercussions for the real

world we live in. Matrice has no form of its own but merely acquires the

ornamentation drawn on its surfaces by a second group of artists.

And here this routine action, standardised by the form approved for

production and workmanlike efficiency, is the origin and cause of change,

generating a variability of choices and interpretations, on that dusty

building site where music plays and mortar flows.

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