For Mario Gagliardi, objects are characters on a stage.
They can embody weighty stability or ephemeral dissolution, soft calmness or colorful excitement. They can point to and expand space, strive upwards or accentuate groundedness. They can be archetypal icons or futuristic compositions, move spaces into a mythical past or surprising futures.
Every design is an expansion as well as a constraint. It is a volume brought into space which changes the space around it. Think of cities: over time, as more buildings are added, space in places like Manhattan becomes increasingly domestic even in 500 meters above ground.
In a domestic environment, the volume of an object forms the space around it. In the case of a chair or couch, it also creates a lived choreography, directing how a human body moves and finds rest in it. A rug influences the space above it, its texture influences how you feel when you walk on it. It is these interventions, mutual interactions and choreographies which interest Mario Gagliardi in his work.
All spaces are arenas where we can compose a poetic play or an opera, a mise-en-scene in the sense of the Gesamtkunstwerk where every object and the people who use it are performing in an open-ended narrative, if it is ironic, dramatic, or poetic.
Mise-en-Scene
Mario disagrees with the contemporary fragmentation of lifestyle into disconnected categories. Rather, he sees lifestyle as a conscious act of surrounding oneself with objects that play a role in a story, where personal adornment and spatial inhabitation interact through expression.
This is lifestyle not as meaningless consumption, but as choice of a conscious experience.
Lifestyle
Mario believes that design must be expressive, legible, and have presence, whether a handbag crafted in Italian ateliers where generations of artisans have perfected their technique, a limited-edition rug that transforms floor into canvas, or a sculptural furniture object that shapes how human bodies interact with it.
Presence
The quality of materials forms the basis of Mario's objects. This is quality in the sense of physical materiality, texture and tactility, but also as a fundamental value carrying emotion and association.
In the Himalayas, Mario's workshop sources, dyes, and weaves unique silks and wools for the rug collection at De Caldes and upholstered furniture at Mario & Casa. The leather for his handbags is sourced, cut, folded, and assembled in Italy with a respect for craft that borders on devotion.
Every single design in Mario's collections has been handcrafted by the master artisans in Mario's ateliers. In constant dialogue, Mario and his team scrutinize the color and texture of De Caldes fabrics, the softness of the wool for De Caldes rugs, the texture of wood grain and suppleness of upholstery in Mario & Casa furniture, and the quality of surface and polish on Mario & Casa brass objects.
Craft
Presence in Mario's sense is a rare but fundamental quality which lies below the surface of form and color, but is created by it. Similar to Werner Herzog's search for truth in moving images, presence is a insight without text, a feeling, a glimpse behind the mere surface of things. For Mario, presence is neither shouting for attention nor hiding in sameness, but it always distinguishes itself from today's visual noise.
By limiting production and insisting on territorial manufacturing, Mario cultivates a discourse to show that the most radical luxury is congruity: the ability to inhabit a fully considered world, where emotion, avant-garde ambition and timeless craft achieve perfect, productive tension.
Congruity