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Alchemy and Memphis certainly broke the tight circle of modernity, which by that time
had become the rule to a great extent on both the good and the bad since
it was connected to the requirements of commerce and industry.
But above all, the glorious legacy of applied and decorative arts was reinstated
from those inexhaustible, albeit forgotten and ostracized mines of history – in other
words, from craftsmen and handicrafts.
Besides, did not Philip Johnson do the same thing in his effort to recover/evoke
the history of architecture when, in 1979, he designed the broken pediment
and the monumental hall of the AT&T skyscraper in New York, a provocative
and conscious tribute to Vitruvio and Leon Battista Alberti?
In 1980, when Strada Novissima, which was designed by Paolo Portoghesi, opened
in Venice and Aldo Rossi's Gran Teatro del Mondo was docked in the waters, it became
evident that something had changed – that to use Marinetti's words in the Manifesto
del Futurismo, "Time and space died yesterday."
In 1984, when Zouboulis and Grekou established their Studio there was
"great confusion under the sky" but also the awareness that it was not possible
"to return to order" and that it was necessary to heed the weight of History and Memory
as vital and constituent elements.
In this way, the Studio became a workshop/forge, a showroom and laboratory where
laminated plastic stood alongside marble and plaster pillar fragments, well-shaped
pieces of wood and furniture comparable to those made by an intoxicated Piffetti
or a Depero F in the culmination of joy.
Materials, forms and compositions that recount history and stories encapsulate both
the notion of research and recovery. Designs that always take into account their final
destination: objects for houses where real people live, furnishings for really inhabited
surroundings, environments where humans, recognizable by their own specific
individuality, live and move about.
The Artemida showroom in Athens represents the epitome, the manifestation of this
particular sense of time, space and modernity that have become history. These are
objects of seminal design that live (relive?) in a luxurious and stroboscopic environment
that is run through, or rather governed by, an imposing and well-shaped staircase
standing classically and still like the eye of the hurricane where the winds whirl around
and the clouds of the storm gather close.
Such is the image of postmodernism as perceived by Studio Metaplasi. An image
which successfully tallies with the writings of Alessandro Mendini in the editorial
in "Modo," volume 1 (1977): "to invent... objects not only appropriate, necessary,
austere, anti-authoritarian but also fanciful ones, light-hearted ones, creative
and amusing objects to be bought, sold, lent, given away, destroyed...." But above all,
an object that would tally with Francois Burkhardt's remarks in his statement delivered
in the Triennale di Milano in 1977 ("Fatto ad Arte" edited by Ugo La Pietra): "The term
‘post-modem’ is [...] first and foremost an attitude towards the loss of identity
that is afoot in post-modem society in its evolution towards meta-modernism which,
is led by technological [...] and financial transformations.... In a monolithic civilization
that is centered and founded on the concept of uniformity, what follows is a culture
based on differentiation and specificity .The concept of hybridization of different types
of activity [craftsmanship
and industrial production] can give birth to intermediate values and practices that open
up new prospects on possibilities which are yet to be explored . "
Therefore, navigating the great sea of images, things and memories in the infinite
worlds that intertwine, interbreed and transform in front of our very eyes in a continuous
birth and rebirth in order to be chosen and transformed into something that gives life
to man. Hic et nunc - yesterday, like today and tomorrow - is a touching adventure,
or at least a journey, as Xavier De Maistre used to say, "around my room."

Anty Pansera

Milano, September 2005