Sottosopra Bar Cabinet from the Trasformatio Collection, Design Michele Iodice Exclusively for the Esprit Nouveau Gallery, 2022

Pair of eyelet bedside tables in poplar briar from the 1930s mirrored in a single bar cabinet. The steel sphere underlines the balance between the shapes.
Integrations in iron and recycled green PMMA, Italy 1930/2022

poplar, steel, plexiglas

TRASFORMATIO

Michele Iodice for Esprit Nouveau gallery

“Trasformatio” is a design line, introduced in the occasion of Edit Napoli 2021.
It was born by thecollaboration of the artist Michele Iodice (1956, Napoli) with Esprit Nouveau Gallery
from Naples (Via Calabritto, 20 -Palazzo Calabritto Napoli 80121), founded in 2007.
Alberta Saladino, founder and soul of Esprit Nouveau Gallery, has been proactively involved in ‘900 antique
pieces research during the last twenty years and invited Michele Iodice to think of a way to reinterpret some
Art Deco complementary design and furnishing pieces, from her private collection.
Trasformatio project has a pioneer and artistic soul able to set the connection lines between past, present and
future.
The whole idea was born with the aim to explore interactions between art and design.
Trasformatio traces an historical path in human minds, that starts with the birth of design and reaches our
living present, embracing artistic novelties with wisdom.
The common thread of the exhibition is dynamism.
“Most of the people think a furnishing piece can only be a set of elements that move in the emptiness of
space. Nevertheless, for others it can be poetry”.
Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976), described his most successful pieces of work with the above words.
Michele Iodice, fully interprets his thought through Trasformatio. His art works are fluctuating in a dynamic
equilibrium where they are able to break the physical limits of traditional static furniture, attributing them
movement and lightness.
Trasformatio artistic methods can be applied to every kind of support.
It does not reproduce, but it tears the item out of its traditional context to revive it, instead, in a completely
different and new environment.
The setup personally curated by the Neapolitan artist, combines a collection of pieces that express the close
relationship between design and contemporary art, as well as the strong connection between cultural
stratification and innovation.
Every object signed by Michele Iodice is rigorously realized by local artisans and tells about the attention to
detail behind it, in a process that enhances the principles and values of “artigianato coscente”, in English,
“conscious craftsmanship”.
The materials used spans from wood, parchment, and Plexiglas, to steel, combined in a fusion that is aimed
to reflect the complexity of the research that Iodice has been performing since years.