The Swiss Touch in Design Miami Edition
Swiss designer Mattia Bonetti guides us through his creative process, Swiss wanderings, at Design Miami.
Guide us through your background. How did you end up being a designer?
Mattia Bonetti: I studied at the CSIA in Lugano, where I specialized in textiles. And then I, well, I got fed up after many, many years. But I still did that to make my own living. On the side, I went to theater school, and then I became an art photographer. I wanted to drastically change the way I expressed myself, so that is the reason why I put my pencils down for a while. I would construct universes and I would take photographs of them in all sorts of different materials. This was very unlike in the ’70s because not many people were working that way. And then by doing things with my hands, I slowly went into design, by first doing things in terra cotta with clay or with other very tactile materials.
Your designs have been described as unique and whimsical. What is your source of inspiration?
MB: I’ve been looking very much at nature, regarding shapes. I’m very open to art, and I have always been, so that is probably why my work has always been a link or midway between real industrial design and artworks. I am also the son of antique dealers. So that has probably influenced the way I look at things culturally. Of course, I detached myself, probably in reaction to that. But it’s something that still is very deep-rooted in me.
Who is most responsive to your designs?
MB: My first clients were all related to art; usually more contemporary or even modern or both. And, of course, there was not a design that was, how can I say, adapted to the work of art they live with. There was nothing on the market when I arrived. So I had an answer to that. I wanted to create pieces that had an artistic feeling and an artistic wish, a deep will of blending in.
What about the Swiss Touch in art?
MB: We have wonderful artists in Switzerland! I could name Giacometti, for example, both Diego and Alberto, and then, of course, Fischli and Weiss, whose work I love, really, and I found very, very, clever, but also very amusing. Then there is a jazz singer that I like very much, a woman named Susanne Abbuehl. Her work is full of poetry.
Do you travel back to Switzerland often?
MB: I have a house in Gandria on Lake Lugano. But I never do projects there. I don’t know why. I think that the landscape, the house and everything is so powerful and so different that I just look out of the window. It’s almost like a monk space. Honestly, in Paris I have this table, in front I have a window, but it’s not at my eye level, it’s up, and with bars like a prison, on a very sort of gloomy courtyard. So, it’s perfect. I don’t even see the sky. The sky is too high. And there I feel very well. Perhaps it distracts me from the world.
Want more? Discover our coverage of Miami Art Week with a Swiss Touch here.
Learn more about our upcoming Swiss Touch programs at www.swisstouchusa.org
