For Elena Salmistraro, drawing is an intimate act. With an unrivalled communicative strength. Because drawing gives shape to ideas: you both give form to the world and reveal yourself. This passion, combined with natural graphic talent, has guided Elena in her project for CEDIT: an experimental series of ceramic slabs produced using a high-definition 3D decorative technique.
The explicit aim is to transform surfaces beyond their original flatness so that a new, visual and tactile, three-dimensional personality emerges, sweeping aside the coldness and uniformity that ceramic objects often inevitably convey.
Elena has always viewed ceramics as a democratic material, in view of their accessibility, and the infinite potentials for shaping matter that they provide. Given this background, it was inevitable she would work with CEDIT : constantly seeking new talents and new approaches. Salmistraro's collection for CEDIT is entitled Chimera and consists of large ceramic slabs, which can be enjoyed not only visually, through their patterns and colours, but also on a tactile level.
Like the chimera in the "grotesque" tradition, monstrous in the etymological sense of the word with its merging of hybrid animal and vegetable shapes, the Cedit project attempts to originate a synaesthetic form of ceramics, through a three-dimensional development that exactly reproduces the texture of leathers and fabrics, creating an absolutely new kind of layered effect, with a tactile awareness that recalls the passion of grand master Ettore Sottsass for "surfaces that talk".
And the surfaces of the slabs Salmistraro has created really seem to talk: in Empatia clown faces add theatricality to the cold gleam of marbles, interspersed with references to Art Déco graphics; Radici uses the textures of leathers and hide as if to re-establish a link between ceramics and other materials at the origins of human activity and creativity; in Ritmo the texture of cloth dialogues with pottery, almost in homage to the tactile rationalism of warp and weft, of which Bauhaus pioneer Anni Albers was one of the most expressive past interpreters ; finally, Colore has a spotted base generated by computer to underline the contrast between analogue and digital, the graphic sign and the matter into which it is impressed.
In 2021 Chimera evolved into Hotel Chimera: an heterogeneous set of elements of different origins and nature which, combined with each other, give life to a unique ceramic work of almost 20 square meters. A figurative artistic expression made up of 80 different fragments, each of which is an abstract work itself, a numbered piece hand-signed by Salmistraro. Presented on the occasion of Milan Design Week 2021, the pieces of the capsules were sold in a few weeks and the proceeds were donated to charity in support of the “Double sense. Tactile paths to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection ", an approach to the world of art aimed primarily at blind children.
Chimera, just like the other collections produced inside Florim factories, is the result of a sustainable process. All Florim plants recycle 100% of production greenware waste and 100% of wastewater. The company can count on 42.000 sqm of solar panels (producing 7,7 MWp), as well as two co-generation plants, and together they can generate – under optimal conditions – up to 100% of the electricity necessary for the operation of the Italian production plants. When complete energy self-sufficiency cannot be reached (due to weather conditions) Florim purchases electricity exclusively from renewable sources.
