The recently talked about Milan duo Carnovsky, speak to Alicja McCarthy about their latest project RGB, their different creative disciplines & Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
If you haven’t already seen their RGB project, with striking overlapping anatomical colour works on paper, they are most certainly worth a look.
1. How did Carnovsky come about? Where did you meet?
Carnovsky started in 2007. Me and Silvia met at Domus Academy in Milan, where we both graduated in design.
The name Carnovsky came from the book “Zuckermann Unbound” by the great American writer Philip Roth, which is actually very important to us.
2. What are your influences?
Me and Silvia have different backgrounds: I’m an art historian and Silvia is an industrial designer, so Carnovsky is actually the result of these different backgrounds and biographies.
3. How did the idea for RGB come about?
We first came up with the idea of working with optical effects of colored lights to achieve the posibility to show or hide something that appears with regular white light. A “trick” which, of course, is not new, but at the same time we have always seen the application with just one color. The issue was to develop a style, a graphic language, or better, a visual universe rather than a specific application. The issue was working with filters, trying to hold all the “magic” and to be sure that the project had a visual interest. We were looking for something “great”.
4. For the wallpapers did you start out wanting to represent anatomical/scientific imagery?
We started thinking about the idea of metamorphosis, in particular we thought about Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which we found the idea of making history of the world as a series of things which transform into other things. We then thougt about the ancient frescos and how it could be possible to make stuff like that in the present time, and so we came up with the wallpapers. They for us, are not only home decoration but also refer to narratives and paintings, the natural kingdom, which also include human beings. We decided to concentrate on this series of wallpapers in very specific and consistently iconographic way.
5. You describe the project as chromatic stimulus – how important is colour to your work?
The “chromatic stimulus” is actually what is needed for the RGB images to change and reveal only one of the 3 layers. But in general terms, colour, especially the primary colours, are the key to our work.
Image: Cage handbag
6. You also created a bird cage handbag & a neon typographical radiator, what’s next?
Well, we are currently working on different projects, but in particular, we are focusing on RGB, designing new images and new applications for this project.
7. And lastly, are there any plans to exhibit in London?
That would be great! We have no plan as yet, but we hope that soon we can have an exhibition in London.
www.carnovsky.com/
RGB Photo credit: Alvise Vivenza
